


The Cooldown

by orphan_account



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Anal Sex, Bisexuality, Blow Jobs, Casual Sex, Chronic Pain, Crossover, Drug Addiction, First Time Topping, Gun Violence, M/M, Mass Effect 3 timeline, Mass Effect AU, Recreational Drug Use, Unlikely Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 17:31:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4796159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen is a mildly disgruntled C-Sec agent whose glory days are behind him. Dorian is a brilliant young tech specialist and talented biotic whose arrival on the Citadel spells the end of Cullen's predictable lifestyle.  </p><p>A Mass Effect AU written for the tumblr Cullrian minibang.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [You (do) know you want to call (me, don't you?)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3906631) by [emotionalmorphine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emotionalmorphine/pseuds/emotionalmorphine). 



Cullen Rutherford sat on the corner stool at his favorite food stall on level 22 of Kithoi Ward’s Edroki Plaza and watched the people pass by, absorbed in their own lives, their own small pleasures and agonies. He looked past them to linger his gaze on the windows and their view of the darkened ward’s distant expanse, flickering with neon, tinged in orange smog as it extended away from the bright, shining Presidium.

Perpetual twilight kept the Citadel’s five wards active at all hours. It had taken some getting used to, but now he thought he might prefer it. There was never any morning birdsong to shame him for his insomnia. He never got home from work after a long day at his C-Sec outpost and felt any dread at seeing the sun set on yet another day passing, locked in the unforgiving inertia of living. When he first arrived, it had been the best and worst form of jet lag he’d ever experienced. Freeing, for one, but also disorienting. Recruiting with C-Sec had given him a purpose, though. Instead of a standard “day” or “night” shift, he’d been given a number designation that slotted into a schedule plotted by a small army of virtual intelligences that coordinated over 200,000 active agents on the station. For the first year, he’d had to keep an intranet calendar running on his omni-tool with automated alarms just to know when to show up for duty. Sometimes he still needed it.

Technically, the Citadel operated on a 20-hour cycle, but it meant little to anyone outside of the Presidium. The wards had no real atmosphere and no artificial lighting, though residences had life support systems with variable settings for “natural” daylight, completely inauthentic of course. Cullen hardly bothered with it anymore. The only thing a false sunrise and sunset gave him were the vaguest semblance of the passage of time, and the bathroom mirror did a good enough job of that. Living in a blur, a light smear that bled across shifts, across weeks, made it easier to swallow how he seemed to be wasting all of it on his career.

He’d been on the station for about five years, and sometimes he forgot that he hadn’t always been there, that this was not truly home. It seemed a tribute to humanity's adaptability that life on an alien space station had become second nature, as easy as moving across town, or at worst, across the country.

If there were something reminiscent about Ferelden on the Citadel, it was the Presidium; man-made lakes, greenery, invasive pigeons, and placid blue skies. Sometimes he could go weeks without setting foot there at all. Crawling out of the wards and into the “sunlight” often left him reeling. Cullen wondered if he ever returned to Thedas, if it would feel the same, or worse. Living on the Citadel one could convince himself he was in between time and space itself.

On Thedas, he’d been ready to serve, to protect, to explore the galaxy. He graduated from naval academy with decent commendations, but just like many others, he found his hopes crushed when he failed to qualify for off-world assignment right away. Everyone wanted to see the galaxy, no one wanted to stay home and march around base or file the paperwork. He trained for months, sitting on a bench list, waiting to receive his orders for something bigger, something with purpose. But then the Batarians hit the Skyllian Verge.

Six months later, he finally saw zero gee. He stood next to his CO in the captain’s ready room of the SSV Tarawa and saw the subtle curvature of Torfan on the monitor. He’d been excited, then, to face his first real combat scenario outside of a few minor incursions en route to the relay. The memories came back with an increase in his pulse, and he breathed deeply, the way he’d been advised during exit therapy. He felt prickles of sweat on his brow and gulped down more of his beer.

The attack had been a travesty. He and the rest of his squad were ordered into a bunker where they were crushed into a narrow maze of hallways and stacked crates of munitions. They formed up into a perfect group for the shooting gallery of Batarians they were there to neutralize in retaliation for the Skyllian Blitz. The record would show that no Batarians made it out alive that day, but Cullen never got to see the celebrations. He’d been deep in an induced coma while medical staff on a remote space station put his left arm and leg back together. He accepted a medal from Admiral Hackett via FTL comm while propped up in his sickbed.

And then the ICT came calling. He and a number of other candidates all shipped out to earth, to Villa Militar, in Rio de Janeiro. His first time on earth had been surprisingly lackluster. The humidity and the heat reminded him of the south of Ferelden, and just about every landmass on the planet was developed into a metropolis barely capable of withstanding the booming population growth spurred by advances in technology. It was no surprise his forebears had left their home planet for some breathing room elsewhere. Though Thedas was little better these days.

The locals called the Villa “N-School.” Only a handful made it past the first week, including him. He left earth with an N1 designation and spent four years working his way up to N3, until his implants caught up with him, anyway. It had been an emergency evacuation maneuver that ended his career with the Systems Alliance Navy for good. He’d torn ligaments, broken his new arm trying to get a cadet into the escape pod before the ship depressurized.

Honorable discharge. “Condition not a disability,” they called it. Still fit for service, just not with the Alliance. He was too much of a risk for them to maintain, not like other servicemen who weren’t knitted together with expensive implants.

He heaved a sigh and peered down the neck of his bottle. Maybe that was everybody’s story these days. Life in the Milky Way was hard for humans, even spacers, from what he’d heard. Just about every Alliance soldier he’d talked to during his service and since had a sob story to tell. The First Contact War had ended a long time ago but its wounds were still deep and still healing, and humanity’s attempt to colonize in the wrong neighborhood had taken a large toll on the lives of many, from Commander Shepard all the way down.

The grim-looking asari who ran the food stall ambled out from the back room. She gathered her dirty apron in her blue hands and wiped them, not bothering to spare Cullen a glance. His stare was a mile long, taking in the crowds moving by in small agglomerations like passing clouds. He was keeping an eye out for someone.

Her voice was terse, as usual. “You’ve been sitting there long enough. You want anything else or not?”

Cullen ran his fingers through his blond hair, scratched the back of his head. Leliana had asked him to meet up, but she’d messaged to inform him she’d be late. She did it because she was usually very punctual and she knew Cullen well. If she’d been any later than this without word, he’d be tempted to go and look for her. She worked in the financial district for a volus firm that brokered in the business of loopholes. Officially, they handled money. Unofficially, they traded information. It was sunny in the Presidium, but much of the business in the financial district was...rather shady.

He tilted the bottle and frowned. “I never really wanted this to begin with. It’s awful.”

“I guarantee the more you drink, the better it will taste.”

“Just a water.” Just in case.

The asari snorted lightly and ducked into the back again. Cullen propped his elbow on the counter and fit his chin into his hand. From the communicator earpiece resting on his shoulder he could hear the faint radio chatter of C-Sec dispatch and enforcement officers going about their duties. It was no matter that his shift had ended two hours ago. The communicator stayed on. If anybody asked why he continued to listen in, he’d tell them it was for the entertainment. It was only a half lie. He was partly listening in out of habit, because he wanted to know what was going on, but there was always weird shit going down, and banter between officers never failed to amuse. He'd never admit that sometimes he’d rather keep working than find himself alone in his thoughts, unable to relax.

 _< <Report of smoke coming from dumpster behind jewelry store, Level 3, Besura Complex, Presidium,>>_ the voice of a salarian helming one of the dispatch desks was clear, staccato, and succinct, _< <available units please respond. Owner of shop indignant of disturbance to business.>>_

There was music playing from a nearby kiosk, but the volume provided a nice buffer for the low hum of the very station itself, just audible over the chatter of the crowds and the clinking of silverware on plates at the other food stalls around him. A keeper ambled out of a small passageway, bumping into unwitting passers-by who then stepped aside to let it pass undisturbed. As Cullen scanned the storefronts and the multitudes of faces, flickering advertisements, and general restrained chaos of the merchant district, the asari came back with a bottle of water.

Cullen muttered a quick thanks and saw a flash of movement, a crop of red hair at the corner of his eye. He looked up to see Leliana sitting down next to him. He relaxed, satisfied that she was safe.

“Busy day?” he asked.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said. When she had a moment to appraise him, she squinted at his uniform “Are you on call?”

He made an equivocal reply, sort of half shrugging. He was always on call, in his opinion.

“I can only stay for a drink, at any rate,” she said, catching the asari’s eye. “A martini, please.”

She wore her work clothes, a slim pair of trousers and a patterned blouse with dangerously pointy high heels. She'd departed right away from her office. How she managed to walk in those things he’d never understand. Combat boots were enough of a chore for him.

“So...”

She smiled and turned her stool so that she faced him, “I’m going back to Orlais!”

“Really?” He amended his blank look with a feigned look of interest. “What’s the occasion?”

“There’s so much going on back home, Cullen, you should really be paying attention,” she groused. When Andra dropped off the martini, Leliana handed over her credit chit immediately. “Haven’t you heard of the Inquisition?”

Once Andra was done with the transaction she made her way out of the stall to pop around back for a smoke break. Relieved to be left alone to chat with Leliana, Cullen nursed the rest of his beer while she briskly explained it, a joint venture between the Chantry and the Alliance, funneling resources and intelligence into a project they were calling “The Crucible.” She couldn’t say much, only that she’d been given a hefty offer to contribute her services, and that she was leaving very soon. He hoped his face didn’t betray his happiness for her. He hated Orlais and their stuffy politics, their national pastime of organized treachery. But he knew she had worked hard to build a reputation, and being hand-picked to represent the interests of Val Royeaux in such a large investment must have meant a lot to her. He was genuinely glad that she was finally reaping the benefits of her crusade to learn everything the volus had to offer, to say nothing of how she’d established herself in the Shadow Broker’s network.

“It’s good to hear you’ll be able to help with the war somehow,” he said, and he was careful not to show his own self-doubt in how he was huddled up in the Citadel instead of out there volunteering or banging down the door at the Alliance recruiting office.

“Thank you,” she said. “It’s good to be going home.”

Home. Where was home, exactly? His mind wandered to the places he’d once felt might have warranted such a classification. Solona came to mind.

“I got a message from her the other day.”

Leliana sipped at her martini and swallowed before speaking. “I’m sorry?”

Of course she had no idea what he was talking about. “Oh. Um, Solona.”

She openly groaned and covered her mouth with a napkin. Beneath the bar she uncrossed and then recrossed her legs in the opposite direction. His stomach twisted at the sound of her disappointment. The conversation had changed gears, and he hadn’t meant for it to. Leliana wasn’t so happy any longer, and her soft Orlesian accent made the amount of frustration less cutting, but he could tell she’d long since lost her patience for listening to his moaning.

“Cullen...”

When he’d been in recovery, discharged from the Alliance with nowhere else to go, determined not to retreat back to Ferelden with his tail between his legs, Solona reached out to him with Leliana’s contact information and a prepaid one-way pass to the Citadel. She was the reason the two of them even knew each other.

“I thought we agreed you wouldn’t do this to yourself.” She chased the olive around in her glass and Cullen rested on his arms, not sure if he was nauseous due to hunger or stress. “You just end up hurting over the past.”

She was right, of course, but Cullen shook his head, idly spun his rapidly-condensing beer bottle on the bartop.

He shook his head, instantly regretting the whole thing. “I don’t know why I brought it up. She seemed happy, is all I was going to say. Married, now. To a spacer.”

“I know.” She popped the olive into her mouth.

He gaped at her. She didn’t look at him at all. Guilty conscience.

“You knew and never told me.” He refocused on his drink when it was too embarrassing to look anywhere else. Quietly, with a hint of insolence, “Am I that insufferable?”

“It was a while back,” she said, shrugging but in the most kind manner she could muster. She touched his arm for a second, gave him a reassuring point of contact. “I didn’t know if she’d contacted you. It wasn’t my place to do it.”

That stung. Quite a bit. While he wanted to think that Leliana was loyal to him, she was Solona’s friend first. He might have asked if Solona was back living in Ferelden or not, if Leliana planned to visit her, but it seemed petty, on top of how he was already acting.

“It’s fine.”

“You’re not insufferable. You’re a kind, sweet man. Solona loved you but...you both wanted different things.”

“Conflict of interest,” he interjected.

Solona had been a promising biotic, training at the Circle, the Thedosian contribution to the Alliance’s BAaT program. She’d been in his cohort at Rio de Janeiro, friendly first because they were both from Ferelden.

They’d been teammates, partners. More than that, starting with a few drinks at a bar after landing in São Paulo, and ending abruptly after commencement. It hadn’t been right to let it continue when they got their assignments. It hadn’t really been right for it to start at all. She wanted to promote up and take a desk job somewhere, have a bunch of kids and settle down once she found the right man. There had never been any doubts that Cullen hadn’t been the one she meant. He wanted to be out there, fighting. They’d broken things off before he left but it never felt official. Not until later.

Leliana sipped her martini and then almost dribbled it out again, hurrying to remind him, “Hm! Then you spent months pining after that woman, what was her name- Marian. She spent most of her time unattainable one way or another. Very convenient for you.”

“You can stop now, Leliana.”

He rubbed his eyes and scrubbed down the side of his face, rasping his stubble against his knuckles. A couple years ago, Marian had stormed into his life, a refugee from Horizon. She spent a lot of time down at the docks, helping other refugees, and he’d been doing a lot of volunteer work back then, too, found a lot of excuses to go and check in on things. She’d always been seeing someone else, and when she was actually single for a brief stint, he never committed to asking her out.

“I only mean you seem to prefer women who are not available, and if they are, you find a reason to drive them off.”

Cullen drowned his dissent in his beer, and then chased it with a big gulp of water.

Leliana ducked her head to whisper, “I hate to break it to you, but maybe women just aren’t right for you. Weren’t you...I know it’s been years but I could have sworn you were—”

“Bicurious?”

“You know how I hate that word.” She frowned and cast a sideways glance at him and accepted his unspoken apology. “You never dated a man but I know you were interested. You told me once, you were terribly drunk at the time so I know it’s true."

“I told you that in confidence.”

“And it is still in confidence. But maybe it’s time for a change. Why not give it a go?”

“I don’t know.” He dropped his head and picked at the label on his bottle, at the edges where the condensing water droplets at dampened the paper. He used it to keep his nervous hands busy, ripping little pieces. “I don’t know how far that attraction goes. I don’t know if I could take it any farther than just a...a bit of necking. It wouldn’t be fair.”

“Fair,” she repeated, laughing. “Do you put so much thought into pursuing women, I wonder.”

“What does it matter,” he said, attempting to lighten things up, “I’m already married to my job, right?”

Leliana finished her drink and let him sit without being prodded any further.

He returned to scanning the walkways, trying not to fret over his failed loves, over the strange feeling of loss that came with the knowledge that Leliana was moving on without him.

From the din of foot traffic on the thoroughfare, a strikingly attractive human man emerged and walked past him only to sidle into a stool a comfortable distance down, on the other side of Leliana. With her recent suggestion, it was hard not to turn his head and try to steal a few more glimpses. His nerves were still a little jangled from revisiting his past, and so he gave himself a pass for biting his lip and taking a few deep breaths to calm himself down. If he were to say anything to him at all, he’d do it without Leliana there to embarrass him.

So he tried to ignore him, and the curious feeling of interest pooling in his lower belly, by looking down the dark corridor, watching an elcor and a young quarian emerge from a shop. The quarian laughed and reached out to touch the elcor in a casual gesture that seemed overtly intimate for this part of the ward. Cullen watched her for a while as she and the elcor lingered at the storefront. She seemed cute, her fitted suit allowed him the notion that she was trim, perhaps athletic, and was generous with her laughter in lieu of a visible smile. He wondered if the elcor was attracted to her, and she attracted to him...or her? He couldn’t be certain.

He thought about Solona and Marian and between the two of them there was little similarity other than the fact that they were both biotics. Troublesome, that. Didn’t want to think of himself as some kind of fetishist. Men and women drew his eye, aesthetically, but he’d only ever pursued a physical relationship with women, and only a handful of times at that. He tried to think of preferences, things that he liked about a person that made them interesting to him. It was taking too long to narrow anything down, and when he realized he was letting his mind wander off without him, he’d peeled the entire label unwittingly off his beer.

“You know what they say about that,” said Leliana, pointing at the damp paper label he rolled between his fingers.

“I don’t want to know,” he said. He tipped back the last of his lukewarm beer and finished it off.

“Just consider it. Keep your options open." She got up and gave him an extremely genuine smile, a kiss in the Orlesian fashion, pressing her cheek into his and making a blatantly dramatic kissing sound in his ear. “Mwah! I’m still setting up plans for my departure. I’ll be in touch, I might need your help moving some furniture.”

“Of course,” he said, and waved her goodbye.

She passed by the newcomer sitting at the bar, and Cullen caught his eye as he watched her go. Andra returned, tossing her cigarette butt in the bin and washing her hands on the way back inside the stall. She barked a greeting at the new customer.

“Hey stranger.” She approached, her voice gruff but not too displeased. “Haven’t seen you in a while. When did you get back?”

“Just this morning, in fact.”

He spoke in a cordial tone, the lilting sound of his voice rich with a sound Cullen hadn’t heard in ages: a high-class Tevene accent. Oh, if Leliana only knew. It wasn’t really rare to meet another Thedosian on the Citadel—they were often coming and going, as were all species and races—but it was rare to meet someone from the former Imperium. Perhaps on the Presidium, in the embassies, but especially not in this ward. They were widely known to be extremely xenophobic, a culture not well known for departing their own country, much less the planet.

Cullen glanced sideways at him, allowed himself to spare a moment to study his appearance, and old C-Sec habit now. Mustache, twirled ends. Six foot, maybe less. Lean build. Styled hair, dark, shorn on the sides. Gold earrings. Civilian clothes, but neatly tailored, and a very expensive omni-tool on his wrist. Bio-amp implants. He always tried to remember notable features on everyone he met, just in case. Always, just in case. He pushed his receiver into his ear to listen more closely to the radio, which had been oddly quiet for a while. It served as a nice feint to make sure the Tevinter didn’t think he was trying to listen in...though he was, absolutely.

Andra ignored Cullen entirely, still smirking at the newcomer. “What can I get you? Don’t say ‘the usual’ because it doesn't exist anymore,” she warned.

Many restaurants were suffering smaller menus thanks to the rations put in effect at the start of the Reaper War. Most of the Presidium and the nicer wards and the Presidium hadn’t even known there’d been a war until recently. Some still didn’t believe, even with the ANN blaring at all hours about Commander Shepard’s recent endeavors on behalf of the Alliance and the Council. The sheer bulk of doom and gloom and brimstone broadcasting on every monitor had become a dull roar of white noise, easily hidden by advertisements for the latest Blasto flick, for the newest expansion of Galaxy of Fantasy.

“Surprise me,” he said, shrugging and sounding pleased with himself, and Cullen couldn’t be sure why.

She kneeled down to rummage in a low pantry before setting to work cooking on the levo-amino side of the kitchen. The man shook his head and looked over at Cullen but didn’t say anything, gazed at him for a moment only and returned his attention to the asari promptly thereafter. Cullen rather pointedly went back to pretending to mind his own business, half-listening to them, people-watching, and half-eavesdropping on the C-Sec central dispatch to keep his mind off of what Leliana had told him.

Andra pulled a bunch of hardy-looking roughage out of the chiller. The leaves were bumpy, nearly black instead of green. “Where the hell were you, anyway?”

“Noveria,” he said. “It was a last minute thing that turned into a one year kind of thing.”

“You’re not going back, are you?”

He folded his hands one on top of the other, the rings on his hands rasping over the countertop quietly. “I haven’t decided,” he said.

“Right. Corporate slavery on an icy wasteland, I’ll bet you can’t wait to go back.” She opened a bag to retrieve a bumpy green and yellow squash, sniffed it, and put it on the chopping block to slice next to the sinister looking cabbage.

“We’ll see. For now, mandatory cooldown.”

There was a domestic dispute call under way on another ward, along with petty theft, in two separate districts. There was a shuttle crash near the university in Bachjret Ward—no casualties—and a young krogan outside of Dark Star in Zakera Ward guilty of egregious public nuisance, public intoxication, and indecent exposure. Nothing out of the ordinary.

A turian dispatcher came up from a previous call for help on the Silversun Strip, _< <I think this volus is just looking for a free ride home.>>_

The responding officer came up with a stern tone, _< <Well, he can get a ride from us, but he’s not goin’ home. >>_

Andra grew quiet as she worked on the other man’s order, leaving the two customers across from one another in resolute silence. Cullen finally turned his attention from the crowd to the asari as she peeled and sliced strange vegetables that had somehow become commonplace human food out in the wards. Cullen quirked a brow at the gelatinous, seeded innards that spilled out of the tough, green flesh of the squash-like vegetables. She removed the seeds and chopped up the rest, threw them in a wok over a ring of small blue flames with a splash of oil. The man to his right glanced over again and this time Cullen brazenly met his eyes, startlingly grey. He had a very handsome face. Coming so quickly on the heels of his discussion with Leliana, he felt a little unnerved.

The man blinked slowly, his smile placid and the curled ends of his mustache tucked neatly against the sides of his mouth.

He held onto his gaze for a few beats, blinked back at him, knowing he was being sized up. He was used to this unassuming stare. He got it daily from his turian coworkers. They didn’t have eyebrows or cheeks to speak of, and expressions for them were nothing like what Cullen knew to recognize from fellow humans. They had blank, unreadable features, initially quite unnerving. Once he learned to look a little closer, at the dilation of the pupils, the placement and movement of the mandibles, the subtle shift in their sub-vocals, he got better at interpreting their moods, especially when it came to lying and intimidation. This knowledge paired with natural patience left him practically immune to even the thorniest of krogan staredowns.

But this was different, this was the look of nobility, of real human nobility. The families in Tevinter were said to trace their lineage back to powerful mages who courted with the gods themselves. Cullen tried to return a blank look that betrayed nothing about himself for the other man to read.

He canted his head to the side, eyes and teeth glinting. “Excuse me for staring. I’m quite the sucker for a pretty face.”

Cullen looked away because he felt a blush rising on his cheeks. It wasn’t the challenge he’d been expecting.

“You work for C-Sec?” he asked, rather plaintively.

He nodded, as if the uniform weren’t enough proof. “That’s right.” Cullen refocused on his water, hoping the Tevinter would take the hint and not attempt any further painfully obvious chit-chat. He drank instead of talking.

It was possibly one of the worst scenarios to be faced with, meeting someone from “back home” who might want to talk about things as if they shared anything whatsoever in common with one another. It was one of those painful elevator conversations, awkward silences uncomfortably filled with chatter, searching for things to talk about until it was polite to leave. Being flirted with made it even more painful.

Andra dropped a handful of meat into the pan, sizzling and snapping. A sweet, smoky aroma soon filled the food stall. Though he had no idea what kind of meat it was or what planet it hailed from, it smelled delicious. The asari, no doubt listening in, peered over at Cullen with a tight smirk and a squint. She scooped up a handful of the leafy vegetable and added it to the wok.

“I see you still have a taste for authority figures,” said Andra, muttering distastefully.

Keeping the wok moving with one hand, she dipped a long-handled ladle into a tall container of dark brown sauce and drizzled it over the vegetables and meat, gave them a few tosses and a stir with a long pair of metal chopsticks. Cullen rolled his eyes to the side. Being come-onto by a Tevinter wouldn’t be the strangest thing that had happened to him on the Citadel by far.

“I only work in administration,” he said.

“You got those scars from the office supplies, then?” the man asked, his tone softer, playful.

Cullen smirked at that.

“Hey,” Andra barked over at him, piercing him with a glare, “don’t get cute. It’s bad enough I have a cop hanging around my place all the time, don’t encourage him to stay any longer.”

The man held up his hands in a ceasefire gesture. “Was I being cute?”

“Shut up.”

Andra poured the vegetables and meat onto a plate and scooped out rice from a cooker on the back counter. She stepped over and set the plate of down in front of the man, who exaggeratedly rubbed his hands together. Cullen snuck a quick look at his meal, something like a stir fry, everything she’d cooked slathered in a tangy sauce. The small heap of short grain rice steamed gently. It wasn’t on the menu. Stomach grumbling, he had a mind to ask for the same thing.

_< <Sigma forty-eight in progress, Tayseri Ward, level 31, all available officers please respond.>>_

Cullen stood abruptly, bumping his sidearm on the counter as he increased the volume on the comm. speaker in his ear. Andra and the Tevinter looked at him in surprise and a bit of alarm. He glanced at his empty beer bottle and thought carefully before reaching for the throat-mic pickups at the base of his uniform collar. He wasn’t drunk, not by a long shot thanks to the weak ale Andra served him, but he knew to avoid the appearance of misconduct. He’d just...check in.  
  
He stepped aside from the food stall and shouldered away from Andra and the Tevinter, activating his mic. “Dispatch, this is LT Rutherford. What's the sitrep on Tayseri?”

_< <LT, we have a hostage crisis in an ERC distribution warehouse, unknown perpetrators, heavily armed. Currently requesting all spec-res officers in the vicinity to report to Captain Vallen on level 30.>>_

“Copy that.”

They’d be getting a spur of the moment command center established. If he could stay out of the captain’s sight he might be able to lend some assistance. He thought of the nearest shops that might have coffee and food ready for about fifty irritable C-Sec agents. He started off, omni-tool casting an eerie orange glow into the dark corridor as he pressed through a small throng of people loitering near the stairs.

Andra called after him as he jogged for the nearest mass transit hub, “Dammit, Rutherford!”

The lieutenant was already out of earshot.

The asari grunted and grabbed Cullen’s unfinished beer. “Lousy jerk.” At the other man’s clipped chuckle, she turned her hard gaze on him. “Don’t laugh, asshole. You wanna pay for this?”

“He’s not good for it?”

She shrugged. “He’s always good for it, just takes him a day or two to drag his sorry ass back here for another lonely dinner by himself.” She snorted and poured out the beer in the sink. “Confirmed bachelor.”

She said it like an insult but Dorian finished chewing with his brows raised, clearly intrigued. “Is that so?” He looked in the direction Cullen had gone, though he’d long since disappeared into the mass of bodies swarming the marketplace.


	2. Chapter 2

Whatever time it was, morning, evening, lunchtime, it didn’t matter. Days had definitely passed. By the time the special response squad got the hostages out of the warehouse, Cullen was running on four hours of sleep, eyes red and only managing to stand thanks to the lingering stimulant effect of his last medigel dose to quiet the pains of his implants overworking his body. He took a ride right up to his apartment complex, care of a patrol car. He pretended not to ache all over as he closed the door and walked up to the front entry, his nerves burning where they joined with the cybernetics in his left arm and hip.

He took the elevator up, a long ride to the sixteenth floor, and it was blessedly quiet. He checked the time on his omni-tool, grimaced at how late it was. It’d be time to wake up in only a few hours. Once the doors opened, he saw his doorway at the end of the hall and breathed a sigh of relief.

As soon as he set foot on the shining alloy floors, his back seized up hard enough to overclock his implants, muscles locking him in place. His obliques and lower back complained enough as it was from an explosive round that breached his shields the day before, but now, overstimulated, his implants simply shut down. Shooting pain arced down his leg, leaving it numb, tingling. He’d had a good few days pushing himself to the limit, and he knew the resulting flare-up would give him trouble, but not like this. He hadn’t been in so much pain since PT when the scars had been brand new. Back then he’d ended up stuck in the bathroom trying to brush his teeth for twenty minutes before he’d been able to relax enough to walk again.

Letting out a yelp that he bit off into a growling curse, he stayed still, waiting for the implants to cool down, to release. With every moment that passed, he felt more anxious that he’d be found. He really didn’t need to be seen like this. He could tell he looked like an utter spectacle. Thirty two years old, stooped forward, clutching his back while in uniform like some kind of badly rendered cartoon.

He didn’t have another medigel to spare, and even if he did, his omni-tool wouldn’t let him take another dose for eight hours. His doctor was monitoring just how much he used, and he didn’t need the lecture that would ensue if he tried to override the daily limit. After a few agonizing moments of carefully paced breath, his back eventually relaxed, but he stayed pinned where he was, holding the wall and sweating.

Of course, just then a man backed out into the hallway, talking quietly to someone inside and laughing before closing the door with a quick swipe of his hand. Cullen recognized him from Andra’s food stall the other day.

They made eye contact.

“Oh. Lieutenant Rutherford, was it? Fancy seeing you here.”

He could feel his muscles begin to twitch back to life, and through his teeth, he tried to be polite. "Yes. I'm sorry I never caught your name. You know Felix?"

Cullen knew all of his neighbors. Felix he knew by name and reputation. Mostly because his father was a well respected researcher whose name had been attached to a few very generous donations to C-Sec’s widows and orphans fund.

The man looked over his shoulder at the door he’d just exited. "He's an old friend. Dear heart is letting me stay here during my layover." The man smiled, his mustache tipped up on one side. "Dorian Pavus."

He extended his hand and against Cullen's better judgment he reached to shake it, causing his back to lock up all over again. He groaned, tightening his grip on Dorian to keep from falling over. The man quickly grabbed his shoulder, held him steady.

"Are you injured? Do I need to get you to hospital?"

"No! It's just...my back is only a little sore,” he gasped, none too convincingly. “My apartment is just there. I'll be fine."

"You don't sound fine, but I'll believe you. Should I help you inside?"

Cullen only swallowed dryly and nodded. “I’d appreciate it. Just...give me a moment.”

Dorian waited nicely until Cullen could manage to take another step, and he gingerly snugged into his side, pulled one arm around Cullen’s waist and helped propel him to his apartment. He unlocked the door with his biometric signature. As the haze of pain faded, he remembered how messy his living room was and felt duly mortified that Dorian had to see it. The kitchen was clean, but only because he rarely ate in it. In the living room there were boxes still packed from when he moved in from another district two years ago, and very little furniture. Two empty ammunition crates served as a coffee table, and it was covered in odds and ends; pill bottles, a massive water jug, a statue Rosalie had made and sent across the galaxy during his coalescence after Torfan. His desk was off in the back, even messier, and his computer monitor was still on, casting light into the corner of the room. Three pairs of shoes littered the entryway, and the floor hadn’t been vacuumed in a few weeks. A few tote bags laid open on the floor in front of the pantry after putting the groceries away, never quite making it to the drawer where they were meant to be stored.

Dorian let him down gently on the couch. Cullen winced as he helped him put his feet up on the table, reclining his head back on one of the mismatched throw pillows.

“What can I do for you?”

Cullen dropped his arm over his eyes. “Leave.”

“That’s not very nice,” he said. "Considering I went out of my way to help you."

Cullen peeked out from behind his arm and saw the man studying the room. He sighed. “I’m sorry. I’ve had a rough few days. There’s scotch, help yourself,” Dorian wandered into the kitchen where Cullen haphazardly waved, and at his noise of delight, Cullen amended, “Within reason.”

“I’ll bring you one, shall I?”

“Please.”

He listened to Dorian sort out where the glasses were, investigating every cabinet until he came across the right one. “How do you like your scotch?” He didn’t seem to have any trouble finding the liquor, as it was already sitting out on the bar. He could hear the heavy glass bottle clinking, the top unscrewing.

“Neat,” he said.

Dorian came back with two drams, one in each hand. “Just like they serve it back in Ferelden?”

“I was hoping we wouldn’t have this conversation,” he said, taking the glass when Dorian offered it.

He sat on the opposite end and made himself comfortable, wanton in how he relaxed one arm over the back of the couch and crossed his leg over his knee. He sat at an angle so he could easily look at Cullen, stretched out, resting his rocks glass on his belly.

“Haven’t any fondness for Thedas, then? You certainly managed to get yourself as far as possible from it.”

“Speak for yourself. Noveria? I can’t imagine a climate more contrary to what I’d heard about Tevinter.”

Dorian sat quietly and swirled his scotch. He gazed around at Cullen’s things, his mostly bare walls, one or two sad carpets, a flatscreen for media, dusty with disuse.

“I feel like we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot, somehow,” he said, finally, making Cullen crack open one eye to look over at him. He was pouting, a little.

“As I said, I’ve...um…” Cullen sipped his scotch and hissed at the burn on the way down. “I’ve spent the last two days wearing forty pounds of heavy armor. Twelve of that, shoved into a duct.” He recalled it, time spent huddled, sweating, waiting for a thug hopped up on red sand to sit still long enough for him to… To rip his head off with an incendiary round. He didn’t want to say it, to remember what it looked like. "At any rate, I apologize. Thank you for helping me."

Dorian drank. "I'll forgive you. Let's try again.” He pressed his hand to his chest. “Dorian Pavus.”

Cullen nodded. “Cullen Rutherford.”

"A pleasure to meet you."

Cullen lifted his glass and drank half of it in one gulp. “Likewise. I’m sorry you haven’t seen me at my best.”

“About that. You said the other night you were just in administration.”

He shrugged. “Technically.”

Dorian flitted his eyes up and down Cullen’s body. “How long have you lived on the Citadel?”

The conversation was very near to small talk, but he found he didn’t mind Dorian’s company so much. Though he was in pain, Dorian’s voice and his ability to carry the conversation helped to take his mind off the ticking-down of the cooldown meter for his next medigel dose.

“Five years.”

He whistled. “Well. You like it here, then?”

Cullen had never really thought of it like that. He didn’t miss Thedas. Not as much as he thought he would, back when he felt guilty about failing to write back to the first of Mia’s many angry emails. For a little while he was a little ashamed, and then he’d been given given a shot at decent work on the Citadel. He had no excuses for himself. He still wanted to protect and to serve and to see what else was out there. Mia and his siblings back in South Reach were proud of him, but he knew if he went home he’d end up in the city guard and grow fat and complacent and angry. Compared to what he’d seen and done—the good and the bad—there just wasn't much left of a life worth living back there. Just a handful of mediocre memories, and a handful of bad ones.

Honnleath, where he’d been born and raised, was filthy with poverty and continuing tensions between classes, eaten up by the urban sprawl of nearby Redcliffe. War was always on the brink between nations. Where Orlais and Tevinter had been historical rivals, they both teamed up to fight against Nevarra when they courted an alliance with Par Vollen. It was just another reminder of the uncertainty of humanity’s future in the galaxy; they couldn’t even make friends on their own planet, much less in outer space.

“I don’t have any hard feelings about...home. I wanted to go to space, and once I got here I never thought about going back.” Cullen cleared his throat. “I’m not really good at this small talk thing. I lack the patience, I guess. Blame it on spending so much time with turians and krogran-bred asari.”

“I understand,” said Dorian. “I experience a similar side effect from cohabitating with salarians. If I’m talking too fast, you’ll let me know?” They shared a chuckle and Dorian turned his attention to Cullen’s media screen. “Should I turn the flatscreen on? Get you a blanket? Something to eat?”

There was a tinge of sarcasm in his voice. Cullen didn’t need help or sarcasm. He wanted a medigel. Cullen pursed his lips and looked down into his glass. “No. I don’t want to keep you.”

“I was just going to run to the shops.” He swirled the last swallow of his scotch before knocking it back. “I could come back, after.”

“No. Thank you, Dorian.” He watched the Tevinter drain his glass and take it back to the kitchen. “I’ll...ah...expect to see you around, then? If you’re staying with Felix, that is.”

Dorian nodded. “Indeed.” He brought up his omni-tool and typed up his contact info, passed it to Cullen’s remotely with a flick of his hand. “If you decide you need anything. Don’t be shy, I know how you Fereldans can be.”

Whatever that meant. He watched him go, the doors sliding closed behind him along with a sliver of light from the hallway. Cullen stayed still and tipped his head back. A Tevinter and a Ferelden living within a few meters of one another. He checked his omni-tool again, made sure his first aid module was set to auto-dose his medigel. As he was re-checking his alarms, he got a ping from Samson in the form of a little blue light. He groaned out loud and ignored it, put the notification on mute.

Of course Samson would call when he was at the end of his rope, just when he’d be the most likely to cave in and buy enough medigel to send the bastard’s kids to private school on the far side of the galaxy.

He must have slept a while, because the next thing he remembered was waking up. He reflexively checked his medigel timer to find it had expired, his next dose not authorised for another four hours. That explained why his back felt a little better, then. Auto-inject had done the trick, and he’d gotten through the worst of the pain while he slept. On the couch. Right where Dorian had left him. He’d have to leave a note of thanks. Or, really, just put it off and wait until they crossed paths again.

He stood up and gingerly tested his implants, checked their calibrations on his omni-tool, and headed for the shower. He liked the water hot, almost scalding, and stood under the spray long after he’d finished washing his hair and body. With his hands over his face, he never heard the entryway ringing. When he exited the bathroom with a towel barely covering his modesty, Dorian was in the living room, setting up a portable chessboard.

“Maker's balls!”

Dorian looked up with a smile. “Now there’s a swear I haven’t heard in ages.” His eyes widened at seeing Cullen darting out of view, just a flash of his arse before he clambered back into his bedroom.

“How did you get in?” Cullen yelled through the door. He rummaged around in his storage bin until he found a suitable pair of boxers and lounging pants. He pulled an old C-Sec team building exercise shirt over his head on the way back out.

“You sound awfully incredulous for a man who left his door unlocked last night,” said Dorian. He motioned toward the kitchen. “I noticed you didn't have a scrap of food, so I brought over a few things. I thought you’d be at work.”

“I...that’s very considerate of you, Dorian, but…”

Actually, Cullen wasn’t actually sure if he should be at work. He grabbed his datapad off the desk and flipped through his apps to look at his calendar. He’d sworn he had a shift to pick up, but the schedule had been revised.  He closed his eyes and cursed to himself. He had work to do at the office, reports to write, but the VIs had already compensated for the last...what had it been? Three days. Shit. Three days spent on near-constant vigil with the hostage situation. Cullen hoped he hadn’t gone too far over his allotted overtime.

What would he do with the next few days all to himself? After all that had transpired on Teyseri he was sure he'd go out of his mind.

Cullen sighed and pushed up his sleeves. “What exactly are you doing?”

Dorian nudged the chess set, centering it on the coffee table. “What does it look like?”

“It looks like you’re breaking and entering,” he muttered.

“Nonsense, your door was open.” He pressed the power button and brought up the menu, choosing a traditional chess interface, which presented itself in the form of black and white pieces, though slightly translucent. "You do play, don't you?"

He did. But he hadn't played in years, not since his recovery. He noticed the pill bottles had been moved to another table and Dorian was looking at them too.

"If you're concerned I've taken something," he said, opening his hands, palm-up, "you'll just have to frisk me." He gave a shrug.

Cullen snorted lightly at how the man's voice tended towards the suggestive. "That won't be necessary. Unless you've got tech that needs anti-rejection meds, I've got nothing for you."

"I was going to leave this here," he said, regarding the chessboard.

“For me to play...by myself?” Cullen smirked and when Dorian boldly met his smirk with a low-lidded gaze that felt altogether too warm and appraising he cleared his throat lightly and raked his hand through his still-damp hair.

He continued, as if Cullen hadn’t interrupted. "But if you've got the day off, I could stay. Keep you company. Not that you deserve my company, but I’m in a strangely charitable mood."

Cullen refrained from agreeing right away. There was an off note hanging in the air, a fundamental difference in how they spoke to one another, left him feeling like he’d spent so long being a cop that he no longer remembered how to act like a civilian, how to treat someone like a person instead of a victim or a perpetrator.

All the more reason to welcome Dorian’s company.

He was altogether nice, at least based on first appearances. He dressed well, had clean nails, but not manicured ones. He took care in his looks, knew exactly how handsome he was, and emphasized the best parts. The moustache crowned full lips, and a rim of dark eyeliner made the pale grey of his eyes even more stark against the contrast of his bronze skin and black hair. He was a little...fussy. It was the only thing about him that he could consider a negative, other than walking in unannounced. On a C-Sec officer. Perhaps not too bright? Or too confident in himself.

His kindness had been welcome but this went beyond what Cullen would call simple human decency. At first arriving on the station he'd thought humans—all of them more or less hailing from a common place of ancestral genetic family—would be inclined to stick together, to treat one another with a modicum of goodness. But he'd seen otherwise. Humans were just as likely to harm you as a vorcha or an asari or a drell. There were no allowances for lapses of judgment, because he'd seen how things played out when you let your biases make you weak. There were no allegiances to anything but money or power here.

"I don't...um..."

Dorian waited keenly for Cullen to decide on an answer. He hitched up one corner of his mouth and propped his hands on his hips. "Do you have anything better to do?” His question was aimed more like an accusation.

In a honesty, no. He didn't. He'd spend all day listening to the radio and waiting for an excuse to skip his day off for more work. But that was his business, not Dorian’s. He bristled at the assumption, but it did nothing to change the fact that he’d be stuck inside all day with nothing to do lest he re-injure himself. As long as he was mended by the time he got back to work there’d be no need for a doctor’s note to release him to active duty. His captain would never have to know how much grief his implants were giving him.

"All right. One game." He held up his finger resolute in his demands.

They sat down to play and after the first few moves Dorian complained about the lack of ambiance. “It’s dreadful. The apartment’s nice, but you keep the shutters down. And this media suite. Speakers, flatscreen...have you ever used it?”

He shrugged, elbow propped on his knee and holding his chin up with his fist. “Once or twice.”

“Can we at least put on a show? I’ll sign you into my omnidex account and we can watch Fleet and Flotilla."

Cullen rubbed at his side. He was still numb, limited in his mobility on his entire left side, but Dorian's diversion had been helpful, and the other man didn’t seem to notice how he moved slower, winced a little when he leaned forward to move his pieces. He sighed into his fist as he looked at the board. Dorian was ahead, but he was having a good time. He couldn't remember the last time he'd actually enjoyed a day off.

“I’ll just take the liberty to utilize these fine assets while you dig yourself out of that hole.”

Dorian reached up with his omni-tool hand and decrypted the security wall into Cullen’s life support system. He set up preferences as if he lived there, easily navigating the settings to turn on the screen, open the shutters, and bring up the lights a little.

Cullen lifted his brows but didn’t say anything. Dorian could feel him looking, probably, and glanced at him over his shoulder. When he never gave a definitive answer about the omnidex, Dorian went ahead and logged himself in. The theme song to Fleet and Flotilla played while he thought over the next few moves in his attempts to take Dorian's queen.

“You’re good with tech,” he said. “Do you have formal training?”

“Yes,” he said, winking. “But you’re fishing for something, aren’t you?”

“I can’t help but notice.” He nodded at Dorian’s omni-tool. Serrice Council. Top of the line tools for only the most exclusive clientele. “I’m sure you’re well-connected, but...”

“You think it’s black market.”

“I know it’s black market.”

“And if it were, you’d what? Take it from me?” Dorian smugly crossed his arms but his expression was still friendly.

Cullen felt the need to pursue it, his hackles standing at the notion that Dorian would challenge him. Spending so much time on a planet with no government had made him careless about laws and rule-breaking, but he needed to remember where he was. Just because he’d helped Cullen out, he wasn’t going to catch a break after flaunting his illegal hardware. Cullen wasn’t one of those agents who’d look the other way in hopes of...whatever it was Dorian might have to offer. He gripped his knees and looked at Dorian, measuring out his options before saying anything else. His nostrils flared as he took a breath to quiet the sudden spike in his blood pressure.

Dorian rolled his eyes. “Relax, lieutenant. I work for Serrice Council.” He declinated the pitch of the conversation, rolling his hand in the air to demonstrate his incredible lack of concern. “It’s not on the market because it’s a prototype. I built it.” He looked a bit disappointed, his mustache twitching into a frown. “You can put your handcuffs away. For now.”

He wouldn’t have blushed if not for how deeply Dorian gazed at him across the faint glow of the board. He diverted his eyes to the screen where a young quarian on her pilgrimage stood before a turian officer who’d responded to her SOS call on the broken-down junker she called a ship. Quarians, like the turians, had little in the way of facial expressions to give away their inner conflict. Unlike Dorian, who wore his heart on his sleeve, and left nothing much for the imagination. Cullen squirmed in his seat and felt his back twinge, hid his pained gasp by pretending to cough.

They played and let the first few episodes of Fleet and Flotilla play without much commentary. Dorian assured him the story got better in the second season. In the meantime he told stories from Noveria that made Cullen realize just how limited his view had become, regardless of living on a space station in the middle of Council Space. He’d been spoiled a little.

“The planet has a fifty-two hour day,” he explained. “The salarians think it’s thrilling. They expect employees  to work a twenty hour shift like it’s nothing to bat an eye at. They’re such a short-lived species that every minute is precious, and yet they spend their forty years cramming as much research and work into them as they can. They seek recognition like it’s the last worthy conquest in the universe. If they get enough of it, they might be granted the rare opportunity to breed.”

Dorian hadn’t been kidding about the effect of spending time with salarians. He spoke at a rapid clip. Probably chided by his peers for thinking sluggishly, being too slow to communicate effectively. The work ethic he knew well, was something he liked about the salarians, something he shared with them, but not the enhanced metabolism. He still needed sleep. More than he preferred.

“The asari, though, they like to take things slow as you please, which of course is why I opted for the contract with them instead of a salarian firm. A thousand year lifespan...can you imagine it?”

It was another hour before Cullen realized Dorian had been cheating the whole time.

“That expensive prototype of yours...does it come out of the box with an application to help you cheat at board games automatically or is that an additional cost?”

“Ha!” Dorian didn’t act scandalized at all, merely bringing up his display and pushing aside an app running in the background. Two of Cullen’s missing pieces rematerialized on the board. “I’m honestly offended you think all the magic in technomancy comes from high-end equipment, as if there’s no art in it whatsoever.”

Cullen realized his mouth was sore from talking and laughing. “Doesn’t it? Why else would there be a market for high-end hacking tools? I’ve seen the contraband that’s available in the lower markets.”

“There’s art in all things,” he said. “You just have to squint to see it sometimes. The omni-tool just helped me rearrange the pieces on the interface. The real sleight of hand was getting your attention where I wanted it.”

He watched Dorian’s lips as he spoke, the glint of white teeth behind them, the curve and the softness and the way his mustache tensed and moved with every syllable. His throat felt a little dry. Dorian was masterful at using his natural charms, he had to admit. His voice was lilting and smooth, like being enrobed in silk at the ears, pulled close to listen to every whisper. He had a graceful way of using his hands and his body to gesture without seeming over the top. The ease with which he’d gotten Cullen to relax made him wonder if he’d had much experience as a professional con artist. But...Cullen had been trained to deal with that sort of element. Dorian wasn’t like that, he wasn’t malevolent, wasn’t taking advantage. He’d done nothing but take Cullen’s mind off of his chronic pain.

Stretching, Dorian got up to wander off into the kitchen. He made himself comfortable, poured them both glasses of wine. "Fancy something to eat?"

“You said you brought some food over?”

"Not a meal." He swiped through a directory of local restaurants on his omni-tool’s interface. "There's a place that does noodles I quite like. They deliver."

Cullen’s stomach protested weakly. He hadn’t eaten. He couldn’t even recall the last time he remembered to eat. "I should really thank you properly for helping me.” He’d been a less than gracious host and Dorian had been stellar in putting up with him when his attempts to make conversation fell flat, or came out aggressive, or just plain awkward. “Order whatever you like, I'll spot the bill."

"Anything?"

"Within reason."

They knuckled down for the last half of their game and were at an impasse. Cullen was on the lookout for illegal moves and mysteriously disappearing, reappearing pieces. Dorian's attention, though, wandered more often to the riveting tales of starstruck turian and quarian lovers on the large flat screen. He stopped cheating thereafter, growing bored once Cullen caught on to him and got the upper hand, which hadn’t taken long. Cullen found he was being drawn in as well, glancing up more often until the game was forgotten, turned off altogether. He did save it, however, perhaps out of a leftover bit of pride at memories of how his sister Mia had ruthlessly bested him at every game of cribbage they’d ever played. When the food arrived, Dorian and Cullen both tucked into their meals. Dorian, shoes off, sat with one leg tucked underneath him. They were midway through the first arc of the first season, and there were already casualties to be counted amongst the main cast. Cullen was irritated that Dorian had gotten him so deeply invested in the storyline of something he’d rarely have the time to sit down and enjoy.

"The admiral was wrong for what she did," said Dorian. "No way around it."

"I disagree. She did what was best for her people. It's not easy being in command. You have to live with yourself regardless of whether it was the right decision or not."

"You sound as if you're speaking from experience."  Dorian lifted his chopsticks and leaned towards Cullen, batting his eyes, lowering the pitch of his voice. "Do you harbor a dark past, lieutenant?"

"Who doesn't these days?"

Dorian laughed low in his throat and Cullen felt his eyes on him for a few beats longer than what he’d consider mere friendly recognition. Cullen ate even though his stomach was unsettled, drank lots of water and suffered the embarrassment of excusing himself to the bathroom the next time Dorian looked over at him again with that searching, seeking look. He thought a little too much about Dorian’s plump lips and the salacious way he looked at him, like he was offering up something Cullen was too chicken-shit to ask for directly. It was more or less obvious that Dorian was flirtatious, but Cullen had no clue how far it could go. He needed to piss, but lingering too long on how Dorian’s tongue flitted out to the corner of his mouth, how his neckline plunged to show collarbones and a wisp of chest hair, Cullen stood over the toilet and held his half-hard cock in his hand, trying to decide on which would be quicker, thinking of Torfan to deflate himself or just rubbing one out.

The former did the trick, because he felt like he’d been absent for too long as it was. He washed his hands and splashed water on his face and checked the time for his next available dose of medigel, blinking through droplets running down his cheeks. He was an old pro at avoiding the mirror because he didn’t need to be reminded of what a mess he was in the presence of someone so graceful and talented. He hurried himself out before he gave his cock any further reason to tent his pajama bottoms.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a very raunchy sex scene in this chapter with some mild drug use in it.

“Rutherford!”

Cullen jerked his head up to see a blue streak striding down the hall. It was the captain. He could tell by her voice before he saw the hallmarks that set her apart. Careful never to mention it out loud, Cullen had a hard time telling some of the asari apart, especially when their patterns or skintone were similar. Captain Vallen was instantly recognizable, though, not only by her unique freckles, but by the bright orange headband she wore, a braided artifact, a memorial, and something that instantly identified her as a colonist born on the now-defunct Chalkhos, overtaken by Reapers only a few months ago. Vallen was as hardy as the brutal climate she hailed from, a former asari commando (because there was no such thing as an “ex” commando according to her), and credited with reforming street gangs in the lower wards and turning the crime rate on its ear in less than a year. It had gotten her the promotion and transfer to C-Sec’s special response unit. He respected her and carried out her orders because he believed in her capabilities, not because of her authority. But even he had to admit to himself, hopelessly career-driven and work-obsessed as he was, that he’d never met anyone who went so far to commit themselves to their duty. It was admirable, and it painted a picture of what he might expect to become someday.

He figured he knew what this was about. He pushed back from his desk to intercept her. “Yes, Captain?”

“What exactly am I expected to do with this?” She held up a datapad.

He took a breath and began to accept his fate, but she didn’t give him traction.

“Unauthorized overtime.” Vallen whispered so their conversation would no longer be beholden to everyone else in the pit. “You’ve been tagged for another OBR violation.”

She laid the datapad down so he could see an outline of that period’s payroll. The time he spent “working”—handing out coffee and water—during the initial stage of the hostage situation was nowhere to be seen. Thankfully. But the time he spent actually engaged in active duty thereafter was outlined in red. And here he’d thought he was free and clear to move on, had pretty much forgotten about it altogether. His gut clenched, all the same. C-Sec didn’t like for their special response agents to work too many hours consecutively when it came to high-risk operations. Higher fatigue caused higher rates of injury and lower success rates across the board, thus the god-like importance of those damned scheduling VIs. He’d gotten away with appearing on site to deliver coffee and pastries, but the moment he buckled into his hardsuit, the onboard recorder betrayed him. Regardless of whether he’d been on call or not, the result would have been the same.

Cullen grimaced openly, as if it would be an effective apology.

“If the internal auditors find out, it’ll be my ass on the chopping block, not yours. We’ve been through this. You can’t keep piling on service hours and expect to not get tagged.”

“I understand,” he said, matching her volume. “If there’d been other options, I’d have stepped aside.”

He did understand, truly. It wasn’t about money, it wasn’t about stress, it was about doing what was right. But the data his suit logged only went off to some database in a secluded server bank. No eyes ever looked, ever cared, but only a hollow package of code, virtual intelligences with no concept of “right” or “wrong” but only bits, ones and zeros. They authorized hours based on statistics, not ethics. Torfan had been a success, statistically. Ethically? A bloodbath. Commander Stannard had gone down in recorded memory as “The Butcher of Torfan,” and Cullen’s name was not far down the list, being her second in command at the time.

Machines could not understand the human element. They were programmed to minimize loss, but they never calculated for special cases like him, for the self-sacrificing, the ones who would break rules to make sure lives were saved. No virtual intelligence could ever make sense of the underpinning of the psyche, the drive he had to be useful, to make sure no one was left behind, that no one had to suffer because of the poor decisions made by their leaders. That’s why the Spectres existed, after all. Unlike C-Sec agents, they were given utter freedom to do what must be done.

“We got those people out alive,” he said. “It’s all that matters. If there’s to be discipline, I’ll accept it.”

"Believe me, I am tempted to suspend you in order to send a very clear message. But I need you for the ambassadors' conference in a few days."

He nodded. "Yes ma'am."

Vallen folded her arms behind her back and looked down her nose at him. "Desk duty until then. Get Lintong up to speed."

They both glanced over at one of the other desks where their newest lieutenant was barely moved in. A young turian, someone’s kid from the military recently graduated from academy. Cullen had seen it before, how the scions of well respected turian households made the rounds in C-Sec until they either found an esteemed position, earned with sweat and effort, or they washed out at their family’s expense. He’d have to teach the rookie how to use their intranet and operating systems, show them the ropes around the offices, and sit down for a long, boring rehash of the division’s activities over the last quarter.

"What about the training exercise on Zakera Ward?" Something he was much more interested in, there. Lots of humans were being recruited into C-Sec, and Cullen had over a decade of mixed military service to draw upon to make sure they all made the cut. If there were no special operations to undertake, it was training—real, honest, boots-on-the-tarmac training—he liked to do best. “I was hoping to have them ready for a formal drill at the conference.”

"I'll allow you to supervise.” She began to turn away, and emphasized, “After you complete your work here.”

“Copy that, Captain.”

She left him to a metaphorical pile of paperwork to sort through in the form of a datapad backlogged with reports that needed reviewing. Busy work to keep him suffering until the other lieutenant showed up for a day of real drudgery. But a few hours before the end of his shift he got a ping from Leliana:

  * _Don’t forget. Chemin de Ronde, tonight at 19:00._



That’s right. She’d sent an invitation and he’d yet to respond to it. She’d be leaving soon, and this was to be her going-away dinner. Odd, that he’d seen her more these last few weeks than he’d seen her in months, and now she was moving away.

He showed up early, in civilian clothes.

Even during weeknights the Chemin de Ronde was full of patrons. It was a small bar, modern, sparse in decor. It sat snugged up next to a number of trendy themed restaurants in the Presidium. The round footprint gave the place its namesake, a large circular bar around the perimeter with small tables for groups in the center. Above, a clerestory provided what little remaining "natural" (also simulated) daylight there was, and as the evening progressed, the lights came up gradually, keeping the room dim. The bartenders walked along the back wall like patrol guards on the ramparts, protecting a very fine and prolific collection of craft beers, wines and spirits, homemade mixers, bitters, and the like. Waitstaff emerged from a small kitchen through an archway, dressed in sleek attire of black and green and white.

Leliana and her party of five sat at the bar, shouldered up to strangers on either side, but the low lights and the good food, many small plates of one or two bites each, made up for the lack of real privacy. The food made its way around: tiny spare ribs, flatbread, roasted chilis, meatballs, and lightly fried vegetables. And drinks, too. Cullen sipped on an amber colored concoction that reminded him of Ferelden pine forests with a hint of smoke. He looked down the lineup of people he vaguely recognized and remembered from other events Leliana had hosted over the years. There were some pretty faces, men and women, human and alien alike. He politely listened to stories, companions reminiscing the good old times, rueful at the loss of their good friend but celebratory in their send-off. Leliana laughed and squeezed his shoulder when she made rounds to visit those on the outer edges of their group.

“Have you given it some thought?” she asked, nudging in close. “When I get to Orlais I want to hear some good news.”

Dorian came to mind. One long afternoon playing a bit of chess had turned into a take-out dinner watching a very romantic vid series about star-crossed lovers. They remained on their respective ends of the couch, and even when Dorian flirted relentlessly, Cullen never thought to reciprocate or even show any inclination that he might like it. Or that he might like more than flirting. Their evening ended with a casual promise to “do this again sometime.” But the next day, he came back, like a stray cat. More chess, more wry observations about life and what turns had led them to the Citadel. More of Cullen’s awkward inability to accept or return any of Dorian’s cautious advances, now that he thought of it.

When he was unable to keep from smiling, Leliana quirked her brow at him. Cullen patted her hand and bid her to go and pay attention to her other friends.

He did find Dorian attractive, but...he had no clue where to start, there. It wasn’t worth mentioning. He’d only get her hopes up. She spent the evening in good spirits, and he watched from the bar as she hugged all her friends and received their well-wishes with aplomb. She was a good person, and she deserved this outpouring of love and support. Cullen shoved down his dislike of Orlais and his generalized grievances with Thedas and gave her a big hug when she was ready to leave. He asked her to convey well-wishes to everyone they knew but he did not name names, and Leliana cried a little, tipsy and reverently affectionate as she was escorted to her ride by one of the young women in her party. She blew a kiss and told him she had faith in him. He walked out of Chemin de Ronde with his hands in his pockets, shaking his head, in awe of how he’d been so blessed to call friend a woman who scared her firm’s competition shitless to the point that they uprooted and moved their business to another planet entirely.

On his route home, he stopped by Andra’s to pay off his tab. Of course, because he spent so much of the evening thinking about him, Dorian himself was at the bar, leaning over a lineup of empty glasses; pints and shots alike. Andra was dolefully serving him up without so much as a wry look or a snide remark. He slowed his stride as he approached.

Andra made a noise of disgust, “Ugh. You again.”

Dorian turned and looked at him. “Indeed. The illustrious Mr. Rutherford.”

His heart sped up a beat. “Was I expected?” Had he promised to meet Dorian and forgotten his word? It happened, sometimes, in the brain fog that followed a big dose of medigel in the wee hours of the morning, when he struggled to sleep, to tell the difference between waking and dreams.

“She was complaining about your standing tab, earlier,” he said, thumbing towards Andra, who accepted Cullen’s chit and rung up his expenses from the previous week. “I had only hoped you’d make an appearance to stop her whining.”

“Hm,” he said, relaxing a bit. “Is that all?”

Dorian’s mouth dropped open in a wide smile, and he reached out to grasp Cullen’s arm. “Are you flirting with me?”

“If you two need a room,” said Andra, handing back Cullen’s chit, “you can rent one from my sister at Hotel Klein, down three levels.”

Cullen cleared his throat and took a second look at all the drinks Dorian had finished. “Is everything ok?”

“Ah,” he said, shrugging. “Just...the past. Always seems to catch up with me.”

"I see." Cullen rocked on his heels, unsure of what to say. He knew the feeling. The cooling relief of medigel was his preferred outlet when memories made for poor company, but alcohol would do in a pinch. He sat down. "I'll join you."

"Splendid! Andra, a round of shots on me!"

She kept the drinks coming until the both of them were red in the face. Dorian went on a tear about the interns at Serrice Council’s labs on Noveria and it inspired Cullen to tell an old story from N-School he hadn’t thought about in years. Tears nearly streamed down his cheeks, trying to recount how one of his teammates had stolen another recruit's kit while on a scouting mission in the wilderness.

"There he was, bare-assed, covered in leeches, saluting the commander!" He snorted and laughed even harder at himself. "Our sergeant was so mad she made us all do laps around the base in our underwear."

Dorian laughed, turned wholly in his seat so that he faced Cullen, leaning on his hand and brushing his fingers over his mustache. "What a view that must have been."

"We were a rowdy bunch." Cullen caught his breath and paid Dorian's insinuations no mind. "It was a difficult program. We had to find our own ways of blowing off steam."

"How exactly did you like to do it?"

Through his muddled state of mind, he recalled finding his head between Solona's legs a few times. He was certain at one point he’d been pushed up against the wall in a bathroom with hands all frenzied under restricting clothing. And, not to forget, being sucked off in a janitorial closet when they should have been on watch duty. He was surprised that he hardly felt ashamed and even more so that he wasn't saddened by the memories of how he and Solona had found respite in one another’s bodies.

"I...um..." He felt himself blushing on top of his already pink cheeks. “Well…”

"Wait. Don't tell me," said Dorian, reaching and placing his hand over Cullen’s wrist. "Let me use my imagination."

Cullen smiled through his embarrassment and checked his omni-tool when Dorian’s warm hand departed his. It was later than he thought. He had a shift in the morning but he hated to leave the companionable atmosphere he’d settled into by Dorian’s side. He also wasn’t sure he was prepared to leave Dorian alone when he was so drunk, and so openly flirtatious. A barb of jealousy may have been working its way into his psyche.

He pushed away the last shot in his lineup and began to stand, using the bar for leverage. “It’s late-”

Dorian reached for the discarded shot, threw it back and slapped it down on the counter, upside down. “Ah! Are you sure I can’t convince you take our revelry to Purgatory?”

Holding tight, he assessed himself. A little more than comfortably buzzed, he’d probably feel it tomorrow, but Dorian was three sheets to the wind, well ahead of him before he’d even sat down for his first drink. He shook his head. Dorian pursed his lips and made a good attempt at trying to beg, moaning in dissent. Andra grunted and cleaned up their glasses, wiped down the counter. Cullen patted Dorian’s back while he grumbled at his own misfortune. He refrained from making any admonishment that Dorian had drank too much already. He also hesitated to say that he wanted Dorian to come home with him, not just back to the complex, but inside his apartment. He glanced at Andra and then at Dorian and opted for something in between.

“Come on, we can share a taxi.”

“So long as it’s with you,” said Dorian, “I’ll go anywhere.”

Maker. Andra looked dubiously between them, her brow arched while she squared up their bill.  “Make sure he gets home safe, officer.”

And so he did. They stepped out of the transit car, Dorian boisterously laughing and Cullen gratuitously tipping the driver for having put up with Dorian’s antics in the backseat. He could already feel himself sobering, having to look after another fully grown man instead of simply tossing him in the drunk tank to sleep it off. Still, it was a sort of fondness that made him reach out to grasp Dorian’s arm again and again, telling himself it was to make sure he didn’t trip. He squeezed Dorian’s bicep and let his hand trail further down, over his forearm, to his wrist, where he felt a sluggish pulse. He pulled away just short of holding Dorian’s hand.

He winced when reaching out to steady Dorian made his implants shriek in protest at the sudden movement. He was sore, still, and kept it in mind as they waited in the lobby for the elevator a while. He injected a half dose of medigel while Dorian was looking the other way, swaying but staying upright under his own power. The ride up drew up a feeling of deja vu from the night they met. The doors opened and he and the Tevinter traded smiles, quieter once indoors as to not disturb any of their neighbors.

“I remember not too long ago how I had to rush to catch you,” said Dorian. He wobbled a little and bumped into Cullen’s arm, and he stayed there, resting against him. “Now I’m feeling like someone ought to catch me.”

Cullen’s stomach lurched a little, but he wrote the sensation off as too much alcohol and too little sense, too much schoolboy infatuation and too little war-hardened logic. He was still feeling the headrush from a hit of medigel and had to keep his wits about him. 

“Why?”

They came to a stop at Felix’s door, and Dorian propped himself up against the wall.

“Because,” he said, lowering his eyes and batting his dark lashes in a way that made Cullen’s chest clench. “I just might be ready to fall.”

“You...um…” Cullen felt himself beginning to stutter and cleared his throat, rolled his neck, causing his bones to crack. “Should I help you inside?”

He hoped Dorian would ask to come to his place instead, even though beyond that threshold he had no idea what it was he expected or even wanted.

“About that,” Dorian rather provocatively reached up to touch Cullen’s chest with his hand. His fingers traced around the snaps down the front of his shirt, his eyes following them down. “I was hoping I could spend the night.”

Much as it pained him, he couldn’t quite rejoice just yet. “You mean, because...you don’t want to wake up Felix?”

Dorian cracked a big smile and leaned in close. He blinked slowly, and Cullen glanced down at his lips, how his tongue darted out to dab at them. Cullen gulped, because Dorian’s fingers made their way to his waistband, veering away at the last minute, hooking into one of his belt loops and giving him a gentle tug.

“A man deserves his rest. Can you blame me for not wanting to disturb him?”

“N-no,” he said, gulping helplessly at the lump forming in his throat. “We wouldn’t want to inconvenience Felix.”

“No,” he said, looking deeply into Cullen’s eyes. “We wouldn’t want to do that.”

Once inside, Dorian went into the kitchen. Cullen busied himself with trying to straighten up. He grabbed the dirty uniform he’d worn that day and tossed it in the wash, closed the doors to hide his near-overflowing refuse bin. Since Dorian had visited before, he’d tried to make the place look a little more presentable, and even unpacked a few boxes. There were pictures up, now, and a new chair and table between it and the couch, a proper one where they could play chess. He went into the bedroom to try and scrounge up a few extra pillows, a spare blanket. When he came back to the living room almost empty-handed save for an old afghan, Dorian was leaving the kitchen with a glass of water, drinking most of it before he took one look at Cullen and laughed.

“Put that away,” he said. He put the drinking glass down and sucked his lower lip into his mouth for a few seconds before releasing it. “I have no intentions of sleeping tonight. Not when there’s a gorgeous man within reach.”

“Dorian-”

“It’s all very nice, this flirting business, but I’m not a very nice man.” He sauntered over to the couch, trailing his hand over the back of it.

“You’re drunk,” he said, not accusing, but reminding.

“I am.” He took the blanket out of Cullen’s hands and let it slide to the floor. He slung his arm around Cullens’ neck, pressing his lips into Cullen’s cheek, possibly on accident, as he swayed on his feet. “But so are you. And we can both make this bad decision together, can’t we?”

Cullen breathlessly leaned into Dorian’s embrace, and it pushed the two of them into the back of the couch, precarious, nearly toppling over it. He grabbed Dorian by the waist and when he looked down he saw Dorian looking up at him with a devious look, his curled mustache framing his pristine smile. He felt his cock throbbing in his pants, knew Dorian probably felt it too, because he felt him thrusting back against it in small pulses of his hips. He’d so rarely been the one who advanced things, it felt natural to let Dorian take the lead. This was what he’d needed. Leliana was right to suggest he give this a try, and he was lucky to have Dorian, so confident and assured, to be there to see him through it. He wanted to kiss him, to hold him tight and touch every place he’d always wanted to explore, to try and please the places on another man where lovers had failed to do so in the past. Cullen inexpertly tilted his head into Dorian’s and closed his eyes, hissing in blunted pleasure, grinding his cock into the hollow of Dorian’s hip.

“Have you been with a man before?” asked Dorian.

Cullen hesitated. “No.”

“You haven’t?” He stopped his hands roving over Cullen’s back and slid them to rest on his shoulders. His lips twisted up in a confused pout, brows pressed together. “Really?”

He’d already prepared himself for Dorian to be upset by his inexperience. “Is that a problem?”

Dorian seemed to consider it carefully but fell to paying more attention to Cullen’s shirt. His hands were already at a vantage to start undressing him, and he focused all his ability on working his shirt open. “Absolutely not. It’s just a surprise.”

Cullen’s breath hitched when Dorian’s cold fingers touched his skin. “I’ve always wanted to,” he said, as if he could garner a gold star for effort.

He looked down between them as Dorian struggled to bare his chest. Once satisfied he laughed and pushed them away from the couch, holding Cullen’s arms so that he didn’t go very far. The plackets of his shirt hung open, revealing his bare torso, implantation scars and all. He felt smaller than he should have, under Dorian’s scrutiny.

“I don’t blame you.” Dorian looked at him from his navel up to his neck. ”In my experience, it’s...quite wonderful.”

“I know I don't exactly look or act the part,” he said, somewhat cryptically, and trailed off, unable to finish the thought, looking away.

“Hush," said Dorian. He ran his fingers through Cullen’s hairline, brushed a few loose strands back into place. “If you want to do this, I’m more than happy to be your first. I’ll take good care of you.”

Cullen laughed nervously. "I take that to mean that you’ve done this before.”

Dorian grinned. "I do this exclusively."

He let out a held breath and smoothed his hands up his thighs, feeling a little overheated and overstimulated, even with the cool air on his belly. Cullen watched Dorian undo the clasps on his own jacket and push it impatiently off, to the floor.

“I've watched porn,” he admitted, “but I...I haven’t been with anyone in...a long time. So long, I don’t even want to say it out loud.”

Dorian grinned and pulled his undershirt off over his head, then pushed Cullen bodily towards his bedroom. “Whatever you need from me tonight, it all depends on you.” He kissed him, just off-kilter, an imperfect aim but piercing Cullen through the chest all the same. “Just how bad does the lieutenant want to be?”

Cullen kissed him back properly, and it seemed that was all Dorian needed to know.

In the bedroom it was dark and silent. Cullen's bed was unmade, and big enough for two. Dorian kissed and nipped all the way there, pushing Cullen down to sit on the edge. His hands were fast at Cullen's waistband, unbuttoning and roughly pulling his trousers down, hooking his fingers into Cullen's shoes and pulling them off all in one flourish. Cullen breathed heavily and looked down while Dorian fished his cock out of his underwear. Before he could balk at Dorian's gusto, he felt his mouth surrounding him. The hot wet tongue and the soft sounds of sucking filled his senses. Dorian moaned into him. He nearly gagged a few times, pushing Cullen's cock past the point of comfort, deep into his mouth, touching his throat. Cullen reached for Dorian's hair, threaded fingers into soft locks that felt like silk. Dorian cupped and squeezed his balls and expertly took Cullen to his limit, careful to draw him back from the edge whenever he seized up for want of coming.

Somewhere along the line Cullen closed his eyes, sinking into the bed and dialing into every pulse and flick of Dorian’s tongue. When he opened them again, Dorian was mostly nude, pants shoved down, crouched between his knees with his cock jutting up, dripping a string of precome onto the ground. A pale blue glow emanated like a rim light around Dorian's body, waves of biotic energy undulating like bath water. Solona had certainly never used her biotics during sex. Cullen hadn’t even realized you could.

Dorian sucked him so hard he thought he might bruise. When he tired of being toyed with like a yoyo, Cullen pulled the hungry man off his cock, dragged him up, causing a slight discharge of static against their skin. Dorian kicked his pants off the rest of the way and gave a little laugh, allowing Cullen to maneuver him onto his back. They resumed kissing, lips swollen and perfectly damp.

"I wanna suck your cock," Cullen said, breathless against Dorian's tongue and teeth.

"Do whatever you like," Dorian sighed, his fingers traveling to his lips when Cullen left them wanting.

Cullen traveled down Dorian's body, kissing and licking along pathways of muscle and bone. His heart raced and his mind filled with blinding images of things he'd seen and wanted so desperately to experience. Dorian smelled strongly of ozone, alcohol, and musk and he dragged his nose through the coarse hair of his groin, finding new smells that tantalized and made allusions to the place he'd visit next. He dove in and took Dorian's length in his mouth without a second thought, attentions focused on the plum-round head that leaked clear fluid onto his tongue. Biotics flared once more, and this time they felt cold, sending a chills down Dorian’s body that broke into gooseflesh. He moaned and writhed under Cullen's hands that roved and squeezed his thighs and ass, pushing up his thighs so that he was spread, utterly, a platter of delicacies for Cullen’s mouth and eyes. He tilted his hips, directing more of his slightly curved prick into Cullen’s pursed lips, fucking his mouth, slow and shallow.

“I might come,” Dorian warned him through little gasps. “Oh, fuck, your mouth is so good.”

A thrill cut Cullen’s awareness to the bone. He was giving the first ever blow job of his life and he was good at it, he was going to make Dorian come, an experienced man who’d made him feel so amazing. He also felt a sliver of worry, self-conscious because he’d lost the rhythm of the moment, and Dorian’s thrusting against him had gotten more insistent, and he gagged a little, which only seemed to make the other man more vigorous. The act had felt better when he’d been lost to it entirely. He tried to go faster, to keep up with the pace Dorian needed to come, but instead Dorian stopped him, hands on his shoulders. When he withdrew, Dorian's cock was visibly twitching, just shy of coming on his face.

"What is it?" His jaw was sore but it was a worthy ache.

Dorian looked dazed. "I want your cock in my ass, Rutherford."

Shit. They needed lube. But for once Cullen wasn't so prepared as he'd like. "I'm sorry. I'm not really used to this kind of thing. I don’t..." He dropped his head. “I don’t have any lubricant.”

"No matter."

Dorian booted up his omni-tool’s microfabrication module, used it to produce a clear gel that squirted out into the palm of his hand. He looked up at Cullen and then moved the lube to his ass, lifting his legs to give better access while Cullen watched, stunned by the intimacy of seeing another man prepare his ass to be fucked.

He slicked himself and moaned at how he brushed against his anus in doing so. He slid that finger inside, slowly at first, and Dorian sighed into it, and then another slipped in alongside it. He stretched himself gently, opening and then receding, and pressing in again. Dorian spat on his hand a second time and then pushed in three fingers and Cullen found his own hand on his cock, hard as he'd ever remembered being in his life. He couldn't believe what he was witnessing, what he was about to do. He couldn't believe how ready he was to breech Dorian's perfect hole, to plunge balls-deep with hunger he'd never known he was capable of feeling. Dorian fucked himself with his own fingers for a while and looked at Cullen from beneath dark lashes. His anus was pink and puckered as his fingers worked inside and then dragged out. It didn’t seem so uncomfortable as he’d imagined. None of it. How had he waited so long to experience this in the flesh? He’d imagined there’d be shame, but there was none, only two flames in the form of men, banked by lust, by the shared heat of breath.

"Go ahead." He added more lubricating gel to Cullen’s cock, smearing it over his length, which also dribbled with expectant precome. “I can take it.”

Cullen moaned and felt how Dorian prodded his painfully erect cock against his wet asshole. The roughness elicited a groan from them both, and Dorian grabbed onto Cullen's arms as he pushed inside. Cullen could feel the man struggle to accept his cock. He wasn’t overly large, not by any means. Whenever a lady partner of his hadn’t been prepared, he’d happily obliged to eat her out until she gushed, but this was different. No amount of sucking Dorian’s admittedly amazing cock would get his ass any more ready to fuck than it already was. He clenched his teeth and through the urgency that rose in his balls he tried to stay patient and steady. He felt a few twitches, Dorian's body reluctant to take him easily, but opening. Dorian jerked his hips back, preventing any sudden penetration, and worked his hand up and down his cock, looking at Cullen with drooping lids.

Vaguely, Cullen saw the light of Dorian’s omni-tool tinge his skin orange, and then smelled a rush of indeterminate vapor. He glanced up to see Dorian dosing himself with some sort of chemical, unfamiliar in the aroma. Not like medigel, really, but similar. Afterwards Dorian laid back and breathed through Cullen's assault with more pleasure.

“Fill me up lieutenant.”

He pushed in, leaning on Dorian's upturned thighs, feeling the ringed barrier of Dorian’s ass relent on one side, and then the internal muscles loosening finally, allowing him purchase to dig further in. Dorian moaned, throwing his head back, his testicles hugging tight to his groin, and his cock straining in the indent of his hip, now forgotten for how Dorian grabbed onto Cullen’s arms. Once he was in all the way to the base, he let himself throb listlessly inside Dorian’s body, feeling his blood-hot insides clench around him.

Once Dorian eagerly nodded for him to continue, he fucked him like a machine, slamming hard and bottoming out against the other man who grimaced and raised his arm up to his face, crying out into his elbow. He took another hit of medicine from his omni-tool.

“What did you just take?”

Dorian didn’t answer Cullen’s breathless question but pushed him off just enough to roll onto his belly. He presented his ass again, holding his cheeks open so that Cullen could see how his hole twitched open and closed impatiently for his return. He took a cue from Dorian and spit on his cock first, then fell upon the man again and found this time that he was able to slip in easier. The bed rocked and squeaked feebly as he fucked Dorian down into the bedspread like an animal. Perhaps because Dorian was a man, he knew he wouldn’t hurt him if he was a little rough, a little more honest with how hard he wanted to fuck and be fucked. He’d waited a long time to let himself get this far. He had ground to cover, years to make up for all the time he wasted in denial, pretending that he wasn’t interested in other men.

He looked down on the perfect, masculine form of Dorian’s back, the subtle curve of his waist, the fine hairs that covered the hard muscle of his ass, and he thanked the Maker that he’d actually listened to Leliana’s advice for once. He dug his hands into Dorian’s rear and squeezed him, slowed down to appreciate how his asshole engulfed his cock on every deep thrust. He slid his hands around the taut, narrow hips, felt Dorian’s cock hard and proud, all for him, and he felt no shame, no hesitance, no worry that Dorian wouldn’t like to be touched by him or that he’d touch him the wrong way.

His body slammed into Dorian's over and over, working himself to a sweat. His arm and leg stung with exertion, but he hardly felt it at all. He felt his balls tightening. He wasn't long for orgasm and hauled Dorian up against his chest, held him tight and bucked a few more times into his ass. He nuzzled into Dorian's ear and let the fiery swell of his arousal overtake him, rushing from his spine up to his scalp. Several churning gouts of come surged from his balls and down the length of his dick into Dorian's body. He came hard. In his mind's eye he imagined filling the other man so fully that he’d be able to taste it.

He panted and slumped forward over Dorian, whose body moved against him, thrusting his hips down into the bed, unsatisfied.

"That was...that was..."

"You're welcome," purred Dorian.

Cullen shifted and laid on his side, pulling Dorian close against him. He reached between their sweat-slick bodies and grasped Dorian's cock, made him shudder while he jerked him off, looking him in the eye until the other man shook in his arms and his come painted his stomach. He came with a small burst of his pent-up biotics, a crackle like a low fire that engulfed them and dissipated into waves of mist.

They melted to the bed, more in fatigue than relaxation. Having lived out one of his fantasies left him feeling like a live wire, stripped of all shielding and ignorance. He wasn’t sure where this left them, what was left to say, to do now that he’d...well...been inside a man he’d only just begun to consider a friend. Unaware of Cullen’s turmoil, Dorian hummed in pure bliss and kissed him hungrily, tongue pushing hard and solid against Cullen’s, pulling his face closer and throwing one of his lean legs over Cullen’s hip, cinching them together.

“Don’t go to sleep yet,” he whispered, and his breath tickled Cullen’s ear.  
  
They’d spend most of the night fucking if Dorian had his way. He was sure of it. The man was still hard, even after coming in huge ropes that still matted the hair on Cullen’s stomach. Dorian mounted him, holding Cullen down by the arms and grinding down into his dick, which hadn’t quite caught up to Dorian’s. Between open-mouthed kisses, Cullen managed to ask how Dorian still had so much fortitude.

“What I took was an ero-stim,” he said, kissing down Cullen’s chest. “Totally legal, lieutenant.” He looked up from licking his own come off of Cullen’s belly, fluttering his lashes. “Can I interest you in a hit?”

Cullen took a deep breath. His arm was numb and needles of pain were prickling in his leg, but medigel would do the opposite if he took any now. He’d be as flaccid as a gym sock. He took one look at Dorian’s dark eyes, watched how he happily touched and tasted and made him feel so good, and he nodded yes. Dorian used his omni-tool to atomize the drug into the air near Cullen’s nose. The rush hit him and his body seemed to melt, ooey gooey, into the mattress where Dorian’s weight felt like nothing more than a silken blanket. His skin buzzed and his vision swam, and his dick felt fantastic. Dorian rubbed their cocks together while they rolled through a fog of aphrodisiac splendor. It only lasted a minute or two, but when he sobered up, his implants no longer nagged of strain, and he watched as Dorian lowered himself down onto his prick, which was rock hard again and copiously leaking precome. For the consecutive time he fucked Dorian raw and marveled at how his body welcomed him, how he leaned forward on his chest and kissed him with abandon. He lost himself in the man’s blue-grey eyes and their fucking felt like it went on for hours, dilated by an automatic dose of medigel when the timer ran down. Determined to see Dorian come first, he took him on his side and nuzzled into his ear, a particularly effective hot spot on the Tevinter’s body that had surprised him. Dorian came with Cullen’s hand on his dick, staining the bedspread. Cullen followed with a few words of encouragement, his hot seed shooting inside Dorian’s ass for the second time.


	4. Chapter 4

The following week, Dorian was still spending the night, only intermittently returning to Felix’s apartment from time to time. It was early, before Cullen’s shift, and they sat on the couch, Dorian in his lap, still panting and weak from orgasm after skirting around the edge of coming for an hour, bouncing and riding on Cullen’s cock, high on ero-stim and loud as he liked. The shutters were closed, but Cullen was sure they’d managed to disturb Felix’s sleep more than once since that first night they used him as an excuse to fuck around. Cullen was tired, but he felt good, worn out in a way that differed from how his work normally exhausted him. The important factor was that he felt needed. Dorian came with nothing but pure desire, asking for only what Cullen would give him, and he never had any reason to say no. He indulged in Dorian’s body, filling every space Dorian asked him to fill, letting himself be taken in turn, truly warming to the touch of another person for the first time since before multiple operations had given him synthetic skin to cover hidden implants.

“Do you want to go back? After your cooldown?”

“Hm?” Dorian swiped the sweat off his brow and looped his arms around Cullen’s neck. “You mean Noveria?”

Cullen nodded, his hands on Dorian’s hips still, holding him where his come couldn’t leak out onto the couch. Startling, how such an act made his head spin last week, and now it was so commonplace as to be expected whenever Dorian knocked on his door. His cock was generally hard and ready before he even made it home, just expecting Dorian to call on him once more.

Was this was the sort of “chance” Leliana had been hoping he’d take? The sex was as good as it had been with Solona, maybe better, more free and less impinged by heavier emotions, by the stress of boot camp and war. But it was also lacking for the same reason. Dorian was an exemplary lover, but there was little that stitched together the careful veil that separated their carnal acts of lust on one side, and the easy friendship they shared on the other. It was no-strings-attached, and that was the way Dorian seemed to prefer it.

Romance wasn’t a strong selling point in the shortlist of traits he’d use to characterise himself, or Dorian for that matter. Cullen knew himself; he was boring and forgettable and struggled with displays of affection. Dorian was the opposite; he was fascinating and kissed and snuggled like it were a job requirement. But outside of preparing to or finishing up a fuck, they were only recent acquaintances, and it left Cullen wanting so much more, to bridge the gap between laughing over a game of chess and being pushed into the cushions with Dorian’s hand down his pants.

Cullen asked about his plans for the future because he needed to know where to draw the line, where to mark the calendar for Dorian’s departure. Not just for when he’d leave the Citadel, but for when Cullen could no longer rely on him to stop up the hole that had formed in his life where all the loneliness began to collect over the years. It might have been bad etiquette to ask, but he braved the minefield because Dorian had always been forgiving of his lack of experience elsewhere.

Dorian finally answered, “There are...inherent problems with working on Noveria.” He sighed and bore down into Cullen’s shoulders, rising from his lap to go and clean up, to get ready for the day. From the bathroom, “The work isn’t fulfilling. I knew it was superficial at best when I signed up, but being there...it’s...I just don’t think I have many other options.”  
  
While he talked, Cullen got up and dabbed at his sweaty chest with a discarded shirt. “You can always stay on the Citadel.”

“Where?”

Cullen’s head shot around in the direction of the bathroom where the door was mostly shut.. He barely knew the man. He shouldn’t, he absolutely should not invite him to live there with him. He’d been alone for a long time and he figured he enjoyed it that way. Spending time with Dorian had been good, too, but...they hardly knew each other.

“I’m sure Felix wouldn’t mind keeping you on as a roommate. You could easily get a job on the Presidium.”

Dorian leaned out of the bathroom, arching a brow. “Lieutenant, you protest too much. You’ll make me believe you actually want me to stay.”

He frowned at how embarrassed he felt in his nudity. He had to leave for work. Dorian turned on the shower and beckoned him to join.

“It’ll be quicker this way,” he said.

Quicker, because they’d only spend half of the fooling around. They washed one another’s backs, shampooed each other’s hair, and with the extra time it afforded them, Dorian knelt on the floor and gratuitously sucked at Cullen’s jutting hipbone, hand working his shaft with lather streaming down his beautifully brown body. With the taste of Dorian still on his tongue, Cullen left the apartment in his C-Sec uniform with worries of how he could possibly say goodbye if he chose to return to Noveria, leaving him with nothing on the Citadel but a pay grade and an empty apartment now that Leliana had left for Thedas.

After a month and a half, just on the cusp of two, just when Cullen felt there was a routine to receiving Dorian as his gentleman caller, he stopped showing up for dinner. He stopped showing up in the middle of the night. He didn’t send a message, left no note, and over the course of a few days Cullen experienced the full range of emotions normally attributed to loss, to grieving the death of a loved one. He tried to remain casual, as their sex had been, but he found it more difficult to keep the man off his mind when he passed by Felix’s apartment every day, wondering if Dorian was hiding from him. To put a fine point on how little he actually knew about Dorian, he wasn’t even sure when his cooldown officially ended. For all he knew, nothing had gone awry between them, but he also had no evidence to prove Dorian hadn’t just up and gone back to Noveria, or to Thedas, or wherever the hell he wanted. But he didn’t want to believe that was the case. Their friendship had been easy, never hung on pretense, and the sex had been...very good. Better than Cullen wanted it to be, really, considering he’d been laboring so long under the impression that he wasn’t interested in men that way. He didn’t just miss the sex, though. He missed Dorian’s company.

He’d learned to hope that Dorian would come over and fill the unnerving silence with his quick wit, his charming laugh, and his good taste in food and drink, in music, and in media. Selfishly, he’d gotten accustomed to it, and when Dorian became distant, he took offense. Even when he knew it was unbecoming, he got a little hurt. He wasted time inconveniently leaving blocks of his schedule open to allow for the man to waltz in and out of his life whenever he pleased. Even dropping by Andra’s food stall had proved a fruitless endeavor. She hadn’t seen him since they’d last been there together.

When he bumped into Felix in the hallway on the way to work, he nearly jumped out of his skin. The young man hurried out of his apartment carrying a heavy bag.

He almost called out to him, wanting to ask about Dorian’s whereabouts, but he hung back, giving Felix room, thinking of turning back into his apartment to avoid any confrontation. But Felix glanced back at him, looking like a cornered pyjack. The briefest glimpse, one he almost averted from taking, afforded him the view of a greenish yellow bruise over his eye, what had once been black and blue but was healing. He turned quickly and tried to hurry the elevator call button so that he could escape. Cullen would have felt the same urge to flee after so vociferously fucking and being fucked by Felix’s friend and houseguest, who’d apparently left him high and dry, but the nervous, shifty look and the injuries made him fall back on his training and authority as a C-Sec agent.

“Felix, are you all right?”

They’d never really talked, only knew each other’s names from social events, from trading mail that had been delivered to the wrong address one too many times. But he cared, not only because he was his neighbor, but because it was the right thing to do.

“Lieutenant Rutherford. I...I really don’t have time to talk, I’m sorry.”

“What happened to you?”

Felix winced. He adjusted the strap of his bag over his chest. “Nothing. I mean- I got woozy while I was cooking the other night. I fell.”

“You...fell.” A likely excuse. They stood at the elevator and Cullen put his hands in his pockets so he didn’t rest them on his hips, where his sidearm rested in its holster. “Have you, um.” He groused at himself and just spat it out. “Listen, I haven’t heard from Dorian in a while. I only wanted to make sure everything’s ok.”

The young man flinched and rubbed his arm, and Cullen felt his suspicions growing with every second that Felix was unable to make eye contact. These weren’t the nerves that came with shame or mild social anxiety. This was fear. He knew the look, inside and out.

“Is there something you need to tell me?”

The doors opened and Felix jumped inside the elevator, hoisting his duffel bag further up over his shoulder and jabbing at the button to close the doors. “Dorian’s all right, I think. That’s all I know. I’m sorry.”

He took the next car down and when he got to the lobby, there was no sign of Felix anywhere. A short commute later, he walked into the C-Sec outpost with a gnawing pang settling in his gut. His implants were acting up more often, not aided at all by how hounded he felt, so tangled up and confused about Dorian and what had gone wrong. Now, with his strange encounter with Felix added to the pile of minor anxieties, he felt them merge into a larger one, a headache forming behind his eyes.

Once at his desk he snuck a half dose of medigel and sighed into how it made his muscles relax, though it did little to settle his worries. Shortly after the injection completed, he got a warning bell from his omni-tool about a new message. He’d been reminded already that he was overdue for an appointment with his doctor at Huerta Memorial for a check up. He’d spent enough time in a hospital for another life entirely and ignored the notification without checking it.

It was a quiet day of paperwork and preparing for an extensive training drill when distress calls started pouring in. Cerberus troopers were flooding the Presidium commons. He got into his hardsuit and armor in record speed, before anyone else in his unit. The biometric scanner started counting down a timer that would yet again signal potential overtime to the VI overseers, but it hardly seemed to matter given that smoke was pouring out of half the civilian boardwalks on the Presidium. Tracers and gunfire streamed in arcs through the air, stray bullets piercing windshields and sending shuttle traffic into tailspins, more than one crashing to the ground where people struggled to get out of the way in time. The Citadel arms could fold in to protect the station from further invasion, but Cerberus was already inside, and they were there in force. They had control of the docks first, and then moved in on C-Sec headquarters. He didn’t wait for orders to commandeer a patrol car along with three others who’d been quick enough to gear up and equip themselves for the attack. He sent two of them to scout ahead and hung back with the other, the young Lieutenant Lintong, who’d proven to be nothing but eager to work hard and earn his trust.

Not five minutes into their approach, the wall alongside them burst, sending dust and shrapnel and flaming alloy into the air around them. The explosion launched Lintong over the barrier, down onto a lower level, and Cullen scrambled to get out of the footpath of an ATLAS mech that crashed through the wall followed by a squadron of ten shock troopers. He ducked behind a partition and watched as they turned back the way they’d come. He reached for his throat mic.

“Lintong, do you copy?”

 _< <I’m still alive,>>_ she said, coughing into the comm channel. _< <I can’t move forward from here, there’s too much debris in the way, but I can look for survivors. Should I even bother calling for backup?>>_

“No. The network’s jammed.”

He radioed the two others on the local comm, receiving nothing but static after several attempts to hail them. The sound of heavy gunfire from ahead gave him the firm impression that they were outnumbered. He assured Lintong that he’d attempt to rally with her when he could find a safe way through. They needed to get to HQ, but it would take more than what little he could offer to breach the ample defenses Cerberus had brought to the Citadel. He closed the comm line so he could spit a string of curses within his own helmet at how easily they’d been overtaken.

It took a half hour for him to sneak around the patrols that wandered the thoroughfares looking for civilians and C-Sec agents to neutralize, most likely. He found himself in a merchant quarter he’d never visited before, heading indoors where the lights were shot out and gave decent cover from being easily seen. Several storefronts had their windows smashed. He heard a familiar voice yelling, not in panic, but in anger. It didn’t have the buzzing quality of a Cerberus trooper’s radio, and so he pursued it, following the smell of overloaded circuits into a Serrice Council surplus shop that had its attendant VI broken, the projector lying on the floor, casting a glitched outline of an asari maiden over a trail of broken glass.

“Fasta vass!”

Cullen’s heart leapt up into his throat. “Dorian?”

The man jumped up from where he rooted around in a large crate, swinging a pistol around and haphazardly training it on Cullen, who held up both hands. He flipped open the visor on his helmet so Dorian could see it was him.

“Maker’s breath!” Dorian faltered, lowering the pistol. “I almost shot you!”

He approached, taking in Dorian’s appearance. He wore light armor, white and black and orange, with Cerberus sigils on the shoulder pauldrons. Cullen squinted hard at the affiliation. Was Dorian part of the attack?

“Fortunate that we ran into each other here.”

“Yes.” Dorian tossed a box over his shoulder, returning to his search. “Fortunate that I’d hacked your omni-tool a while back and put a trace on your serial. I knew you were nearby, but I thought I had time to pick up some supplies.”

The onboard recorder always gave him up. “You hacked my omni-tool? No, nevermind that. Where have you been?”

“I could ask you the same thing. Ever think to check your messages?” he groused, leaning into the crate and shoving aside boxes until he found one he wanted. He flung open the packaging and pulled out a biotic amp.

Cullen’s chest throbbed with the realization that the message he’d gotten earlier hadn’t been from the hospital at all. He didn’t bother reading it now. He had no answer for himself, only glanced around to make sure they weren’t drawing any unwanted attention. Dorian pulled the security tape off of the amp’s plugs and reached for his cervical implant, removing the retainer and slotting the amp into place, hissing at how it stung to plug it in. His eyes glowed blue for an instant as he summoned biotic flares into his hands, testing the amp’s effectiveness. The flares extended into a barrier that covered his armor, scintillating with a gentle pulse up to his neckline and down to his knuckles, where his bare fingers were bruised and reddened with tiny scrapes where they escaped from his gloves.

“And before you jump to any further conclusions, I am not involved with Cerberus,” he said, meeting Cullen’s glare. “I stole the armor. Just like I’m stealing this amp.”

“Just tell me what’s going on,” he said, holstering his rifle. “I saw Felix this morning, he’d been roughed up, and it looked like he was running for his life.”

“Because I warned him to get off the station,” he said. An explosion shook the building. Dorian grabbed Cullen’s arm pulled him along, out the back of the building and into an alleyway. “We have to get off the Presidium.”

“Keep talking,” said Cullen, pulling his arm free so that he could reach for his SMG to hand to Dorian. “Tell me everything.”

He took the weapon and slipped it onto his belt, on the opposite hip of his pistol. “I’m afraid you won’t want to know everything, dear Cullen. Perhaps just the pertinent parts.” He crouched and pried open a panel to give them access to a service passageway cluttered with electrical components and discarded parts. “My father...he works for Cerberus. He knew about the attack and hired the Blue Suns to get me off the station. Felix got caught in the crossfire.”

Cullen grunted with effort as he sidled into the narrow passage, damning himself for choosing to wear the bulkiest armor available. Too often he found himself crawling around in the ductwork. His armor bumped against the wall every now and then, catching on a few loops of cable until he was caught up short. Dorian reached to help him, their faces close, meeting one another’s eyes deeply. Cullen looked at his mouth, saw him smirk, and then averted his eyes.

“Why didn’t he come and tell me? Why didn’t he say something?”

Dorian shrugged off Cullen’s concern. “He had good reason not to, considering my father’s ample threats to silence him. And he knew I could handle myself. The stupid bastards only got through two relays before I was able to get the upper hand,” he said, tossing the coil of cable off of the hinge where it had gotten caught on Cullen’s armor.

“How’d you manage that?”

He laughed. “Seduction, of course.” When Cullen didn’t laugh too, he sobered up, scowling. “It was only a joke, for Andraste’s sake. You act like I abandoned you on purpose.”

“Don’t,” said Cullen, rubbed the wrong way by Dorian’s glibness. They worked their way through a number of corridors until they ended up in a service lift. “We have to meet up with my partner.”

“I thought we were going to my ship,” said Dorian. “We don’t have time to fuck around here, lieutenant.”

“I’m not leaving her behind,” he snapped. “And I’m not leaving the Citadel in the middle of an attack.”

Dorian crossed his arms. “Well I’m not fucking staying here. You’re out of your mind. I risked my ass coming here to look for you..”

Cullen scoffed. “You were looking for me? I didn’t know you cared.”

Dorian’s eyebrows leapt up towards his hairline. He flushed and turned away. “Oh, fuck off.”

_< <Come up, LT Rutherford. Do you copy?>>_

It was Lintong again. “Go ahead.”

_< <I ran into Captain Bailey and some of his men. We’ve been ordered to meet up on the quad at Urdaz Pavilion.>>_

Dorian snorted. “So Cerberus can have you all crowded in a small space together? A fine idea.”

Dorian’s words hit close to home, perhaps without meaning to.

“What are we supposed to do?” Cullen grabbed the control pendulum for the lift and ordered it to take them down. Dorian jolted and grabbed for the handrails as they started moving slowly downward at an angle along the sloped wall. “I can’t just leave.”

The biotic barrier shimmering over Dorian’s silhouette faded as they rode down. He leaned against the handrail and looked across the platform at Cullen with an angry pout.

“Pavus Senior will be so pleased to hear he spent an exorbitant amount of money getting Junior evacuated before Cerberus got here, only to have him come right back,” he said, pitching his voice up to a register Cullen recognized as purely sarcastic, “to save his big, dumb, blond, idiot boyfriend who dragged him into battle because he-”

Boyfriend? He liked the sound of that. “Dorian.”

“Don’t interrupt me, that’s very rude.”

Cullen crossed the distance and put his hands on Dorian’s shoulders. He leaned down, Dorian lifting up on his tiptoes to kiss him without prompting, all too briefly. He pressed his forehead into Cullen’s, holding onto Cullen’s armor to help him gain enough leverage to reach up to his neck, urging another kiss out of him, sweet and nearly innocent, unassuming in how their lips connected with no undertow of lust.

“That was…” Cullen gulped. “Really nice.”

"There'll be more later when we get out of danger, I assure you."

They came to a stop, as far down as the lift would take them.

Dorian traced his finger over Cullen’s breastplate, over the chipped paint that read LT. Rutherford. “Fighting our way through a horde of Cerberus infantry? Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.”

They met up with Lintong and about twenty other C-Sec agents taking cover in the valet overhang and the front lobby of Hotel Paradisi, just across from Urdaz Pavilion. Captain Bailey and Captain Vallen were talking in the center of it all, giving out orders to the higher ranked officers in the group who were still in one piece. There were officers who were not so lucky. They passed a small triage where the unconscious and the gravely wounded were being stabilized by those with first aid specialization. Cullen took hold of Dorian’s wrist as they forged a path through the crowd.

“There’re hundreds of thousands of well-armed agents on this station but they’re not worth a damn if we can’t organize ‘em.” Bailey and several others weren’t even in armor, still wearing their standard fatigues. “What can you do for me, Captain?”

“I have six spec-res agents in full assault gear ready to push, sir.” Captain Vallen herself was dressed for war. “Four snipers with spotters are already in position on the mezzanine across from HQ’s back door.” She saw Cullen coming and with one look at Dorian, she drew her firearm. “Now I have seven. Have you got a live one, Rutherford?”

“No,” Cullen said, and he glanced at Dorian, who blanched when he saw how the others caught on quickly to his armor’s affiliation. There was more to Dorian’s story than he’d been willing to admit, that was obvious, but Cullen wasn’t ready to have his...friend...taken into custody. Not while he could be of help. “He’s...he’s with me.”

“If you say so. I need you to pick out a squad to stage a distraction while Bailey’s men sneak in through the loading dock.”

Bailey looked between them. “You sure about that, Vallen?”

The rumble of distant explosions had Dorian pulling his wrist free from Cullen’s grip. “It’s suicide,” he said.

“I can do it,” said Cullen. “We just need to give them a window.”

“But at what cost?”

He picked out a group of experienced men and women, mostly asari, turian, and humans he’d worked with before. He tried to assign Dorian to a support role, somewhere out of the line of fire where he could still safely escape. Cullen told himself it was sound strategy, but in the back of his mind he hoped Dorian would listen, would escape the station while he could. If he disappeared in the fray Cullen would at least have reasonable defense for not sitting Dorian down for questioning, for drilling down into his story of being kidnapped, about his “questionable” work on Noveria, and into his father’s association with Cerberus. But the Tevinter would hear nothing of it, wouldn’t leave his side.

“I won’t let you get all the glory,” he said. “Besides, if I die like this, it’ll really piss off my father. There’d be no better way to go.”

Cullen didn’t want it to come to that, no matter what transgressions the man’s father had made. They spotted a large number of Cerberus soldiers loitering around the front of C-Sec headquarters, the ground shaking under the enormous footfalls of two ATLAS mechs that patrolled the entryway. He put the two strongest vanguards up front, and then himself and another veteran from the Traverse in the middle. In the back, an engineer and two biotic adepts, asari maidens who sneered at Dorian when he joined them. They moved into position and waited for Bailey’s signal. The two asari worked in tandem, generating a huge barrier that swelled over the entire group like a bubble, unburstable. The vanguards raced forward, Cullen and the other soldier laying down suppressive fire that drew the ATLAS mechs out from the front of the building. More Cerberus troops poured out into the open, and the snipers above took their shots. Rather quickly, the temperature of the “diversion” changed from a spur of the moment annoyance to a full scale assault. Cerberus engineers brought out shield generators and turrets that kept the vanguards deeply embedded in their cover, popping out to sling their biotics in a wild arc into whatever or whomever was unfortunate enough to be in the way. Cullen stayed crouched, organizing their efforts, directing the battlefield over the radio.

He couldn’t sacrifice much time looking over his shoulder to check on the biotics in the back, but after the second ATLAS fell to an amazingly powerful biotic attack, he had to see who was responsible. Dorian was...incandescent. He moved with a sort of tempestuous grace Cullen had never seen in combat. Even the two asari were looking solemnly impressed. He only took a breath to let his powers cool down when both mechs were reduced to smoking heaps. He smirked when he noticed Cullen was watching.

They received positive response that Bailey had gotten into the loading docks, and a minute later, that Commander Shepard was on the station. Relief rinsed down like a soothing rain, but it was short-lived. Even while they drew Cerberus out of C-Sec HQ to clear the path for Bailey and for Commander Shepard, more troops were still destroying the rest of the Presidium. Their position was threatened by an ever-encroaching wave of foot soldiers supported by well-hidden shield generators, and Cullen ordered them to fall back when the biotics needed time to recharge. Over the radio, Vallen demanded the others belay his orders. Just a few more minutes.

Dorian put his all into ripping the riot shields off the front line, then lifting a group of them off the ground with singularity, signalling to the other biotics to start assailing any weightless targets with throws and warps, causing biotic detonations left and right. Cullen bit his tongue. They cut through fifteen, twenty, then five more, and still they faced radio silence, expected to stay there, to die. Cullen watched as more and more troops in white armor flooded out to replace every one they put down. Stabbing pain in his arm made it hard to keep his weapon level, and when he leapt out of cover he landed poorly, crumpled on his left leg. Cerberus took advantage, landing several shots that quickly took out his shields. They burst in a halo of percussive force. A cooldown alarm blared in his ears and along with the countdown he counted three hammerhead rounds to the body, slamming him back into the partition that had once been his cover.

“The LT is down!” One of the vanguards was shouting but he couldn’t tell where they were, his vision blinded by a whiteout of smoke.

_< <Hold your position!>>_

Cullen curled up as dust and chunks of the partition cascaded down around him. He held his head, trying to hear the faint rasp of the radio over the noise of gunfire and the scream of pain and static in his own ears. For a second he saw himself huddled up, crowded with other armored bodies and weapons with no room to breathe, much less to shoot back at the batarians who had them pinned down.

“Get him out of there!”

_< <Belay that! Bailey and Shepard are inside, we have to keep Cerberus occupied!>>_

It was Vallen, or someone else, he wasn’t sure. The sound of the voice was ragged and gritty over the radio. It was someone with authority, someone who had command over each and every one of them. Someone who could decide in a second that his life wasn’t worth those of the others, wasn’t worth blowing the entire mission. Cullen closed his eyes and felt two more hammerhead rounds smash into the ground and the partition around him, perhaps only saved by the smoke and dust clouds still drifting around him, lowering visibility.

If he could get his gun up, if his damned arm would just work for once, he could take a few more out before he died. When he tried to reach for it, his arm seized up entirely. Seconds later, his shields regenerated weakly, only to be blotted out again, and this time the bullet passed his armor. He felt it bite into flesh and heavy weave cybernetics, ripping through his side.

“He’s been hit!”

_< <I repeat: Hold your position!>>_

“Fuck that!” Dorian’s shout was loud enough to carry over the roar of automated fire from the turrets, and Cullen realized this was possible because he was already storming ahead, his barrier projecting out in front of him just in time to deflect what must have been a missile, given how it exploded. “Get out of the line of fire before I pull you out!”

That changed things. The fear that gripped him with cold fangs released him, and it was his bad arm that he used to claw his way back over the wall. He blindly collapsed at Dorian’s feet. He’d made good on his promise to protect him. His mass effect fields hummed as they were barraged by suppressive fire. He raised his arms, lifting half of the engineers on the far end of the courtyard, holed up behind a low wall of shield generators. With a flourish he brought them crashing down into their own equipment, smashing the turrets and generators. The others moved up, vanguards fast to take advantage, and the other biotics joined in, sending shockwaves of force through the soldiers still on their feet, slamming them into one another. Dorian released his pose, the barrier falling, and dragged Cullen up to sit against the wall. While the others were charging forward, they were safe. The snipers up top were picking off stragglers that attempted to flank the rest of Cullen’s squad.

“Are you all right?” Dorian hurried to checked him over. Blood sheeted out from the joints in the left side of his armor and down over his hip. “Shit, you’re really bleeding. Use a medigel before you hemmorage!”

Cullen shook his head. His heads-up display was glitching, and he could feel coolant from his suit’s motorized joints leaking down his leg, or maybe that was blood too. “I don’t have any.”

“Used it all up, have we?” Dorian snorted and brought up his omni-tool, resting his arm on his knee. He was getting fatigued from using his powers, sweat beading on his brow, a gentle tremor to his fingers as he navigated the first aid measures of his omni-tool. “I know how you like to indulge, my dear, but you really need to be more careful.”

“I wasn’t exactly planning to get into a firefight with Cerberus today,” he groaned, leaning his head back. He grabbed his side and felt his implants throbbing. Probably tore his attachments again. Shitty second-rate tech never lasted that long, anyway. “And it’s not...it’s not like that. I don’t use it for fun.”

“I know,” said Dorian, implacable as he hacked Cullen’s omni-tool and overrode the lock on his first aid program, re-allocating more doses of medigel. “You’re welcome, by the way, for saving your life.”

He sighed, feeling the medigel hit him as soon as Dorian released the lock. The injection was enough to instigate his flesh knitting back together beneath his suit liner. It hurt, like being cauterized.

“On your feet,” he said, helping him up. “I’m getting off this station, with or without you.”

“Wait-”

Dorian pointed at the horde of C-Sec officers who were organizing on the quad. “The network is back online. Bailey has all of C-Sec killing Cerberus soldiers on sight.” He motioned at himself. “I’m getting out of this armor and as far from the station as I can.”

“You don’t have to go,” said Cullen. “Vallen knows you’re with us, she’ll-”

“She was ready to sacrifice you,” he yelled. “I’m not fucking interested in falling for a selfish bastard who’s looking for the next opportunity to go down in history as a martyr!” Dorian’s eyes were hard. He shook his head and wiped sweat from his brow. “At any rate, I have certain ties with Cerberus. Sticking around won’t bode well for me.”

Cullen grimaced, holding his side and squinting through his visor at how C-Sec was apparently well on its way to getting control over the station, thanks in part to their diversion, but mostly thanks to Shepard and Bailey. It was a grisly scene, bodies of Cerberus troopers and C-Sec officers alike littering the field, stacks of smoke and chunks of the Presidium’s upper decks and bridges collapsing into the gardens and water features below.

“You mean your father? Or is there something else you aren’t telling me?”

“I mean I fucking worked for them on Noveria, all right,” Dorian hissed. "It means Felix and his father are on Cerberus payroll for one reason or another, and so is half of the magisterium. I'm incriminated by mere affiliation."

“Did you know about the attack?” Cullen rounded on him. He pulled off his cracked helmet and threw it hard on the ground. “Did you spend that time getting close to me just to hack into my account and give sensitive information to Cerberus?”

“No! The things I had to do for them, for my father...I didn’t go on a ninety day cooldown, Cullen, I fucking escaped from captivity. I swear I’m not a part of this, I don’t want anything to do with Cerberus or my father. I just want to live my life!”

Cullen shook his head and waved off a C-Sec agent who ran up to join them, ready to put Dorian down if he so much as spit in the wrong direction. “I have this under control. Go on ahead, I’ll...I’ll take care of this one.”

They looked at one another and a challenge was rising in Dorian’s eyes. His biotics gently flared, but not enough to cause a threat, just….instinctual, as far as Cullen could tell.

“I came back to make sure you survived this. Now that I’m sure, I can go. If you want to come with me, there’s room, but you need to decide quickly.”

“You’re really serious?”

“Everything that happened between us was real for me,” he said. “I’m sorry I’m not exactly who you thought I was, but like you said once...we all have a dark past. I’m ready to leave mine if you are.”

But he couldn’t just go. He had a life on the Citadel. He had responsibilities to...to his captain. Didn’t he? She’d ordered the squad to stay in place because they’d have all been in danger if they went in to save him. But what would he have done? Would he have listened to her orders and let someone else bleed out until a stray bullet finally took their life? He’d listened blindly to orders once before. He didn’t want to believe he’d ever be put in that position again, but there he was, on the receiving end. Leliana had gone back home, just in time to avoid this mess, so he knew there wasn’t really anyone else left on the station to use an excuse to stay. No one else had turned his head, not until Dorian. He had no idea what kind of future it was Dorian wanted, or what he could possibly have to offer, but...he wanted to find out. He shook his head and rubbed his sweaty hair out of his eyes, feeling a right fool for even considering such a thing.

Dorian misinterpreted, gave a sharp nod and made to duck in for one last kiss, not on Cullen’s skin but on the cold metal of his hardsuit's gorget. “Take care, lieutenant.” He pulled away.

“No. Wait. I’ll come with you,” he said, eyes on Dorian as more officers swarmed past them.

For a while there’d be an opening to leave unnoticed, but the gap was closing. Once C-Sec had control of the station again, they’d likely close the arms and they’d be trapped inside, shot on sight if they were caught trying to depart the station without official clearance. They’d assume Cullen was defecting.

“You’re sure?” Dorian’s eyes lit up but he didn’t immediately smile. “You’re willing to leave your career at C-Sec for me? You’re liable to get a promotion after all this, you know?”

“If we get out there and I change my mind, you can just drop me off at the nearest fuel station,” he said. “Otherwise, you can help me draft my letter of resignation.”

Dorian laughed until he folded forward at the waist. “I’ll just have to make sure you don’t change your mind, then, won’t I?”

He let Cullen grab his arm, helping him walk but giving the impression he was Cullen’s prisoner until they were out of sight of the snipers. It was too much like how they’d met, only vaguely in reverse. It was rash, it was careless, but with Dorian’s hand on his lower back, it felt right somehow. If Vallen or Bailey or Shepard wanted someone who’d run blindly into danger without care or concern for the ones they left behind...they could find someone else. Heroes like that were a dime a dozen in the galaxy. Cullen had finally gotten a glimpse of what it was like to have something to genuinely live for, a person to come home to, and he didn’t want to sacrifice any more than he already had to keep it.

Forgiveness felt sublime. Forgiveness for Dorian’s shaded history with Cerberus, for unknown ills perpetrated by his father; forgiveness for his participation in the slaughter of his own squad at Torfan, for the poor treatment of the people he thought he loved. Years of anger and grief had made it hard to believe he’d ever be capable of mercy. But he looked over at Dorian and in the same glance saw a selfish man who’d made and would continue to make mistakes, and yet he still found him to be exactly what he wanted. The same absolution was there for him, somewhere.

On Kithoi Ward, they stopped at Cullen’s apartment for a frenzied round of arguing with each other about what needed to be brought and what could afford to be left behind. On certain things, Cullen would brook none of Dorian’s impatience. He crammed clothes and memorable trinkets into an Alliance duffel, careful not to break the pictures of his family he’d only so recently unpacked. Dorian raided the pantry to bring what shelf-stable food there was, and when Cullen couldn’t provide him another bag, he shoved what he could into a pillowcase and threw it over his shoulder like a bindle. They ran most of the way to where Dorian’s borrowed frigate was “parked” near the docks. Its shields had protected it from much of the damage it should have incurred during what Cullen could only call a “precautionary landing.” They had to put on breathers to get to it, since it punched a hole in the side of the terminal and vented the atmosphere into space.

Cullen got settled in the back while Dorian rushed to the cockpit to get them discreetly disembarked. He noticed signs of a struggle, bloodstains on the grated floors. The Blue Suns were not particularly fastidious mercenaries, but Cullen knew what he was looking at. Dorian had been held prisoner on this ship and he’d taken it by force in order to get back to the Citadel. Further back, there was a door leading to the cargo bay that had been blasted off its hinges. Cullen pieced together what might have happened. Seduction, indeed.

The ship lurched precariously as the reverse engines spun up. Once they were out of danger, a course charted to the nearest relay, Dorian appeared in the mess hall where Cullen sat on a bench, still carefully peeling himself out of his armor. He dug an RTE meal bar out of the pillowcase from Cullen’s apartment, tore into it with his teeth. Cullen watched in awe as he scarfed it down. At the sink he washed his face and neck, then drank a handful.

“Where are we going?”

“I thought we might try Illium. The big cities are a chore but they do have a lovely countryside in the eastern hemisphere.”

“There’s always Thedas,” said Cullen, earning a smirk from Dorian as he sat down to help remove the trickier parts of his armor.

“Really,” said Dorian, but then he quirked an inquisitive brow. “How does Rivain sound to you this time of year?”

“It’s an option.” Cullen lifted his arms to let Dorian pull off the breastplate, revealing his side scabbed over and bloodied, stark with epithelialized tissue. “Maker, that stings.”

Dorian pulled a medical kit out from a compartment under the bench. “You’ll live.”

Cullen laughed even though it made his ribs ache. Without a proper medbay, there wasn’t much to do but lie down and sleep and let Dorian’s first aid do its job. Using medigel for so long had diminishing returns, and it took a lot to stem the pain, but it was something he’d learned to expect. Despite all the good causes for it, the conversation about his addiction never came. Dorian cleaned him up as best he could, stripped him out of his damaged suit liner, checked him over for any wounds they’d missed. He helped to dress him in his favorite pajama pants that had thankfully made the jump into his duffel bag, and gave him alternate painkillers to help him sleep.

While pulling garments out of Cullen’s bag, the holographic chess set had revealed itself. He’d grabbed it because there was sentimental value, just like Rosie’s little statue she made him, which was also in the bag. There wasn’t much to make a life with, between his paltry bag of clothes and a pillowcase with a few odds and ends in it, but he’d never really had one on the Citadel to begin with.

Dorian caressed his cheek and kissed him lightly on the brow instead of making fun of him for that sentimentality.

Through a rather small porthole door, he was led to a large bed in the captain’s quarters. He laid down and pulled up the thin wool blanket while Dorian undressed. There was no heat or fervor, no exchanges of sultry looks or promises of mutual desire. Dorian had promised more, but Cullen had no intentions of bringing it up until he could keep his eyes open, until he could move his arms and legs without the need to suppress a helpless cry of pain.

His omni-tool blinked, long-forgotten in the crush of activity. Hidden behind a number of ANN alerts, was Dorian’s message.

“Are you going to read it?” Dorian’s weight made the bed sink a little. “It’s all right if you don’t want to.”

“Why, is it incriminating? Embarrassing?”

The soft laugh was very charming. “Absolutely not.”

He read it while Dorian sat behind him, looking over his shoulder.

  * _Short notice, but I need you to meet me at Kithoi-Presidium dock 48-A. Pack a bag, because I plan to ride off into the galactic sunset together._ _-Dorian._ _P.S. Don’t keep me waiting, amatus, or else I’ll be forced to hunt you down._



If he’d actually bothered to read it, if he had shown up, he wondered how their conversation would have gone. Would Dorian have warned him about Cerberus? Would Cullen have even considered dropping everything in that moment to just follow Dorian and his infatuation with the man into the unknown?

He settled on an observation that didn’t betray much of his uncertainty. “I see you failed to mention the impending coup.”

“I tried to be subtle.” Dorian reached over to close down the display on his omni-tool. “I think I re-wrote that message a dozen times before I sent it.”

“It was good of you to include the threat at the end, there,” said Cullen. “But you did keep your word.”

“Certainly. And here we are, riding off into the galactic sunset, too. What can I say?" He shivered and felt Dorian's nose brush against the shell of his ear, warm breath carrying velvet words: "I’m used to getting my way...amatus.”

Asking about what might have happened didn’t seem so pertinent, right then. He was too tired to fight anymore, and the warmth of Dorian’s body fitting against his back was the last thing he wanted to remember, the last thing that made his chest feel pleasantly tight when the other man’s arms wrapped around him. He’d made his decision.

He’d live.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm considering the story finished here, but being just shy of 25k is really bothering me. So, I'm working on an epilogue. Thank you for reading.


End file.
